Trek Thursday

"MrDakka" (mrdakka) 07/06/2017 at 23:03 • Filed to: Trek Thursday

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A bunch of the old Star Trek movies are available on Amazon Prime and I was watching The Undiscovered Country for Shakespeare in the original Klingon and the climax struck me as odd. The whole affair with emission seeking photon torpedo being something that Bones and Spock had to jury rig together to defeat General Chang’s cloaked Bird of Prey seems out of place.

I mean missiles nowadays usually come in two flavors, active seeker and passive seeker along with maybe command or semi command guidance at launch. Some newer ones even come with multimode seekers allowing the operator more options.

But apparently, almost 300 years in the future, passive seekers on photon torpedoes are either unheard of or are not standard.

And neither is any form of counterbattery radar nor anti-aircraft missiles nor chaff nor decoys not point defense, etc.. Sometimes I wonder just how ludicrously profitable and deadly warfare could be if Lockheed, Northrop or any other defense contractor were present in the Star Trek universe. They’d make a killing

Alfalfa > MrDakka 07/06/2017 at 23:17

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If I were human, I believe my response would be “go to hell”.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > MrDakka 07/06/2017 at 23:41

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The Defiant is the only purpose built federation fighting ship I can think of, it might have countermeasures. You would think that since they are fighting so much they would something more than shields for defense.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > MrDakka 07/06/2017 at 23:42

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Have you read the expanse or watched it on tv? Much more realistic space stuff going on.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > MrDakka 07/06/2017 at 23:45

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You forget that humanity almost annihilated itself during WWIII. Perhaps that technology was lost forever in the destruction of most major governments, and then with the advent of worldwide peace a need to redevelop it never arose.

MrDakka > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 07/07/2017 at 00:51

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Yup, compared to trek, the expanse is diamond hard sci fi

MrDakka > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 07/07/2017 at 00:53

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I could buy that explanation, if Starfleet was confined to the solar system, but with so many aliens making up the Federation, including the gun happy Andorians plus constant skirmishing with the Klingons and Romulans, I find it hard to believe no one else came up with those technologies

MrDakka > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 07/07/2017 at 00:58

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You would think so, but jamming frequencies is the about only counter/ccountercountermeasures tactics Star Trek universe.

Maybe the saucer separation is considered countermeasures? Use the saucer full of civilians as a decoy/meatshield/kamikaze attack?

Birddog > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 02:03

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I watched the “reboot” Treks this week (again) and application of logic is not logical. Suspend disbelief. If you want to pick on something watch Firefox.

random001 > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 06:44

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You understand what the Federation is, don’t you? It’s important. It’s a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada.

random001 > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 06:52

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Well, there were decoy probes in Trek somewhere.

As for jamming, think about what the ships are doing to begin with. (I’m an EW engineer, AMA?) First off, shields. Shields are up all the damn time. So you got this massive energy output for anything to lock onto. Of course, this would be considered a form of barrage jamming, covering as much of the spectrum with noise as possible to overload receivers and kill agile waveform trackers.

But in space, with so little of anything else out there, you are broadcasting a huge pinpoint location energy signature for anything to track pretty darned easily. Hence STII when they went into the nebula to confuse the sensors. It was a backscatter problem, at that point. Disperse the emission to remove the point source for tracking. Basically, it’s a trade-off of having shields or being harder to target.

Also, the ships and torpedoes most likely would use laser tracking, given so little space-loss (distance traveled based attenuation of the signal, not a problem in space) for the superior range and Doppler resolution, and lasers are hard to jam without directly throwing a similar beam into it’s face.

They had to modify the torpedo with something that would sense emissions out of the band of normal tracking. Normally a cloaked ship would be running on low power mode, minimizing these emissions, but to run weapons systems, the cloaked ship had to be running hotter, which allowed the Enterprise to break through the cloak. If the BoP would have powered down to normal cloaked operation, it wouldn’t have worked.

X37.9XXS > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 07/07/2017 at 09:45

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They did

According to Memory Alpha, the Defiant was also equipped with ablative armor

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Defiant_(2370)

MrDakka > random001 07/07/2017 at 10:15

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I would think infrared seekers would be ideal for space combat with all that fusion exhaust and whatever radiators they have glowing white hot, but this being Star Trek maybe they have no need for radiators?

The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!) > random001 07/07/2017 at 10:19

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That’s pretty much how I understood it, though I don’t have the EW background to explain it so well. I remember in the TNG episode where Troi is kidnapped and placed on a Romulan ship as a Tal Shiar agent, there’s a huge emphasis on keeping the ship movements slow and energy emissions down, to the point that the Enterprise detects the Warbird when there’s a problem in engineering. I could see a ship running at military power emitting more than usual, allowing that the trick to work.

MrDakka > random001 07/07/2017 at 10:24

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Yeah, I know. I guess it would our equivalent of mounting antiship missiles on a research/survey ship.

MrDakka > Birddog 07/07/2017 at 10:28

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I know, I know. Suspension of disbelief is required, especially for sci fi settings. Also I need to watch that Clint Eastwood think in Russian again

random001 > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 10:33

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Depends on which drive system they are using. Most Starships have three: thrusters, impulse, and warp. But you are 100% correct that any ship with lights on would be hotter than the surrounding space. Cloaking devices are supposed to require massive energy shunts to drive thermal energy into storage so they aren’t emitted into space. At least, that’s the theory.

random001 > The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!) 07/07/2017 at 10:35

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Yeah, that one. Think of it like a submarine, and it helps. They go all passive, battery power, and secure all crewman so no one so much as drops a wrench.

random001 > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 10:36

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I was quoting Captain Pike from 2009's Star Trek right there...

Textured Soy Protein > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 10:57

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I can explain this! 

23rd century Starfleet ships’ sensors can sorta kinda be jury rigged to detect cloaked ships but generally it’s not until the 24th century TNG era where Starfleet ships are consistently able to figure ways to detect cloaked ships, especially older 23rd century cloaked ships.

So, given that General Chang’s ship is a fancy new 23rd century Bird of Prey that can fire when cloaked, we know that its cloak is more sophisticated and effective than the typical 23rd century cloaked ships which 23rd century Starfleet ships are only intermittently able to detect.

Uhura points out that the Enterprise is carrying special equipment for detecting gaseous anomalies and suggests using it to detect Chang’s ship. Spock and McCoy jury rig that equipment to a photon torpedo.

The plot hole is, earlier in the movie, Captain Sulu complains about the Excelsior being sent off on some boring mission cataloging gaseous anomalies. So it doesn’t make sense that the Enterprise would have the equipment.

According to this thread on Reddit , originally the script called for the Excelsior to use the gaseous anomaly equipment to detect Chang’s ship, but Shatner complained that the Enterprise should be the one to have the final solution, not Sulu and the Excelsior. So it was rewritten, but not exactly coherently, because the line about the Excelsior doing the gaseous anomaly cataloging is still in the final cut of the movie.

Textured Soy Protein > MrDakka 07/07/2017 at 11:04

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Usually they evacuate the civilians to the faster, more fortified drive section. Except when it’s an emergency saucer separation.

Birddog > MrDakka 07/08/2017 at 17:49

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I pulled a double feature of Firefox and Blue Thunder last night. They actually held up fairly well for 80s stuff. (Probably because they relied more on the story than the flash, bang, boom cgi stuff we have now)