Jem Hadar ships & cloaking devices?

[James Wright]

Do Jem Hadar attack ships use cloaking devices? During the war the Federation & Klingon Empire lost ships that were patrolling the neutrak zone, if those ships had seenan attack force approaching why not get out of danger and warn the nearest starbase?

JDW

 

[Timo]

It is quite possible that the Jem'Hadar operate cloaks, but there's no direct plotwise necessity for them to do so.

The Alpha powers could "mysteriously" lose ships to uncloaked enemy action the way the Grissom was lost in ST3: the enemy could jam transmissions at the last moment. The jamming could be camouflaged as natural noise of some sort, too - or perhaps the Romulan Neutral Zone is naturally very noisy, considering how ships there have often had trouble communicating with Earth ("The Enterprise Incident", "The Defector"). All sorts of dense nebulae and spatiotemporal anomalies would allow for ambushes in the Trek combat environment. Finally, the Jem'Hadar could fake their IDs (transponders, warp signatures, what-have-you), so that only a close look would reveal them for what they are. And by that time, they would already have delivered the deadly blow.

Then again, the Jem'Hadar might use cloaks, but sparingly, so that nobody sees them use it - or see and live to tell the story, at any rate. Originally, we might have thought in "Jem'Hadar" that the Vorta spy beamed herself to oblivion, out of devout loyalty to the Dominion. But later we learned that most Vorta are very conscious of their own safety, so we are probably better off thinking that Erin beamed onto a cloaked Dominion vessel which then escaped to parts unknown.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

Why have a power hungry cloak like the Romulans and Klingons? Maybe their ships use some other sort of stealth technology, like the ship in Gambit.

As Timo said faking IDs transponders and warp signatures could also hide a ship.

They could also, as Riker once pointed out, be borrowing one. Hiding in a nearby plants pole, or near a sun, and be ready to jump out, jam transmissions, destroy the target, and go back into hiding.

The one in Jem'Hadar could mean that Dominion ships are, while not cloaked, could power down and their shields could absorb or deflect low intensity scans. It wasn't until Sisko told O'Brien to scan for the ship was it seen.

 

[Unicron]

O'Brien also thought the Dominion ships in the Wormhole that the Prophets destroyed ("Sacrifice of Angels") had simply cloaked themselves, suggesting that they might have such a stealth system. We know the Jem'Hadar use personal shrouds.

 

[Meredith]

Why cloak when you rule by fear through large ass numbers, of course i don't see how it could hurt them to have some of their ships have cloaking devices. They seem to know enough to use anti-proton sweeps to detect cloaked ships indicating that they did have past experiance with cloaked ships.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Its clear that the Dominion could easily develop a Ship based cloaking device but it would appear they dont feel the need to do it, the Jem'Hadar are bred for war and conquest and go head on into a fight, they're not the sneaking kind and prefer to go straight at the enemy, if they're not afraid of making Kamikaze runs into other ships then they're not scared to been seen. Its possible there is 2 or 3 ships capable of cloaking which is used by changelings to infiltrate an enemy planet but thats probably about it.

 

[Timo]

the Jem'Hadar are bred for war and conquest and go head on into a fight, they're not the sneaking kind

Umm, the Jem'Hadar march into battle under personal cloaks. Sneaking is first nature to them!

It is probably easy to control an empire when your soldiers and ships are invisible by default. The hapless subjects never know when a Jem'Hadar is watching over their shoulders for signs of sedition...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Timo said:

the Jem'Hadar are bred for war and conquest and go head on into a fight, they're not the sneaking kind

Umm, the Jem'Hadar march into battle under personal cloaks. Sneaking is first nature to them!

Generally when they sneak in under cloak they take the enemy as prisoners, they did it with Sisko and Quark and O'Brian and Bashir, if they didnt sneak in their targets would likely run or shoot first which is no good when you want to take them prisoner. All other times such as when they board ships they go straight into hand to hand combat without using cloaks even when they've got their rifles.
If they're going into battle they go straight in without cloaking, if they need to take prisoners they sneak in. Ship to ship combat is a whole different ball game, they go all out without sneaking.

 

[James Wright]

I know that there isn't a complete list of ships lost by Starfleet, the Klingons and later the Romulans due to sneak attacks across the neutral zone but can anybody name any of the ships lost by such attacks?

JDW

 

[Timo]

If they're going into battle they go straight in without cloaking

I wouldn't really say so. When they seemingly perform a classic infantry charge against the Starfleet positions in "The Siege of AR-558", our heroes rightly exhibit surprise that they would attack uncloaked. And sure enough, the charge is soon exposed as a holographic ruse...

The Jem'Hadar aren't idiots. Every time they can attack cloaked, they do - and not just to take prisoners. Witness their attacks in "To the Death", for example: cloaked to the last moment, bloodthirsty from there on, both shipboard (in the simulations with the friendly Jemmies) and planetside (as the sentinels of the rebel group attack the heroes and friendly Jemmies).

That their ships aren't cloaked when they engage the enemy may simply be because they decloak at a greater distance than Klingon or Romulan ships generally do, out of technological or doctrinal reasons. Their ships did manage to surprise the Romulans/Cardassians completely in "The Die is Cast". Hiding behind the planet wouldn't suffice, as the Romulans/Cardassians were slagging the whole planet, supposedly from multiple sides. Decloaking sounds like the most probable tactic...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

If I remember correctly, at the time of the attack on the Founder's homeworld, Cardassian, Romulan & later on Federation & Klingon weapons had no affect on Jem'Hadar ships.

JDW

 

[Vanyel]

Timo said:
Their ships did manage to surprise the Romulans/Cardassians completely in "The Die is Cast". Hiding behind the planet wouldn't suffice, as the Romulans/Cardassians were slagging the whole planet, supposedly from multiple sides. Decloaking sounds like the most probable tactic...

Timo Saloniemi

Weren't the Dominion ships hidden in a nebula?

 

[Timo]

Yes, they came out of "the nebula", supposedly meaning the Omarion Nebula that surrounded the planet. But were not previously told that the nebula could hide starships...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Timo said:
Yes, they came out of "the nebula", supposedly meaning the Omarion Nebula that surrounded the planet. But were not previously told that the nebula could hide starships...

Timo Saloniemi

Depends how deep into the Nebula they were, the deeper in you go perhaps the more dense the nebula was and thus prevented sensors from penetrating.

 

[Vanyel]

Timo said:
Yes, they came out of "the nebula", supposedly meaning the Omarion Nebula that surrounded the planet. But were not previously told that the nebula could hide starships...

Timo Saloniemi

So Enabran Tain made 2 crucial mistakes.

1. He trusted a Romulan, never realizing Lovok was a Changling.

2. He didn't think that a nebula could hide ships. Despite the events of The Wrath of Khan, The Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command. Which, as leader of perhaps the most ruthless and most successful intelligence agency in the Alpha Quadrant, he should have known about at least the 2 most recent events in which ships hide in nebulae.

Makes me wonder how he was the only leader of the Obsidian Order to live long enough to retire.

 

[Meredith]

Vanyel said:

Timo said:
Yes, they came out of "the nebula", supposedly meaning the Omarion Nebula that surrounded the planet. But were not previously told that the nebula could hide starships...

Timo Saloniemi

So Enabran Tain made 2 crucial mistakes.

1. He trusted a Romulan, never realizing Lovok was a Changling.

2. He didn't think that a nebula could hide ships. Despite the events of The Wrath of Khan, The Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command. Which, as leader of perhaps the most ruthless and most successful intelligence agency in the Alpha Quadrant, he should have known about at least the 2 most recent events in which ships hide in nebulae.

Makes me wonder how he was the only leader of the Obsidian Order to live long enough to retire.

Yeah, he would have gotten away with too, if it were for those meddling changelings.

 

[Vanyel]

Meredith said:

Vanyel said:

Timo said:
Yes, they came out of "the nebula", supposedly meaning the Omarion Nebula that surrounded the planet. But were not previously told that the nebula could hide starships...

Timo Saloniemi

So Enabran Tain made 2 crucial mistakes.

1. He trusted a Romulan, never realizing Lovok was a Changling.

2. He didn't think that a nebula could hide ships. Despite the events of The Wrath of Khan, The Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command. Which, as leader of perhaps the most ruthless and most successful intelligence agency in the Alpha Quadrant, he should have known about at least the 2 most recent events in which ships hide in nebulae.

Makes me wonder how he was the only leader of the Obsidian Order to live long enough to retire.

Yeah, he would have gotten away with too, if it were for those meddling changelings.

Scooby Doo!

 

[Jono]

JDW said:
I know that there isn't a complete list of ships lost by Starfleet, the Klingons and later the Romulans due to sneak attacks across the neutral zone but can anybody name any of the ships lost by such attacks?

JDW

Only the USS Cairo was mentioned as destroyed due to the Jem'Hadar sneaking through Romulan space. Can't remember if they said how often it had happened before.

Timo said:
The Alpha powers could "mysteriously" lose ships to uncloaked enemy action the way the Grissom was lost in ST3: the enemy could jam transmissions at the last moment. The jamming could be camouflaged as natural noise of some sort, too - or perhaps the Romulan Neutral Zone is naturally very noisy, considering how ships there have often had trouble communicating with Earth ("The Enterprise Incident", "The Defector"). All sorts of dense nebulae and spatiotemporal anomalies would allow for ambushes in the Trek combat environment. Finally, the Jem'Hadar could fake their IDs (transponders, warp signatures, what-have-you), so that only a close look would reveal them for what they are. And by that time, they would already have delivered the deadly blow.

Isn't that similar to what happened in "Valiant". The Jem'Hadar attacked that Starbase while emitting some sort of jamming that made them invisible and Nog and Jake only noticed because they almost ran into an attack ship.

At impulse speeds ships only seem to be able to tell another ship is approaching about 4 seconds before it drops out of warp. Half the time if the ship is in battle they don't notice another ship approaching until it arrives and fires its first volley, but that can be put down to battle damage, interference from radiation from ordinance exploding and energy weapons fire and general jamming run by both ships to confuse targeting sensors and torpedo locks.

Then again, the Jem'Hadar might use cloaks, but sparingly, so that nobody sees them use it - or see and live to tell the story, at any rate. Originally, we might have thought in "Jem'Hadar" that the Vorta spy beamed herself to oblivion, out of devout loyalty to the Dominion. But later we learned that most Vorta are very conscious of their own safety, so we are probably better off thinking that Erin beamed onto a cloaked Dominion vessel which then escaped to parts unknown.

Timo Saloniemi

Dominion transporters were shown to have a much greater range then AQ versions, Dukat managed to beam Kira from DS9 to Empok Nor which was a few days travel from DS9. The ship need not be cloaked, simply outside the Bajoran system and out of site of Deep Space 9. By the time the station can organise anything the ship can be long gone. All you need for this would be a single changeling in the AQ and they could easily steal a ship and modify the transporter (or use one they smuggled in, did DS9 perform mandatory customs checks on vessels returning from the GQ?)

 

[Timo]

Isn't that similar to what happened in "Valiant". The Jem'Hadar attacked that Starbase while emitting some sort of jamming that made them invisible and Nog and Jake only noticed because they almost ran into an attack ship.

Great point! Although one might think that the lower quality of runabout sensors vs. usual starship sensors might also factor in. Or the tactical willingness to scan around. If you just want to go from A to B unbothered, like Jake and Nog (or like Tain's fleet in "The Die is Cast", come to think of it), you might withhold your active scans and generally keep it quiet.

Dominion transporters were shown to have a much greater range then AQ versions, Dukat managed to beam Kira from DS9 to Empok Nor which was a few days travel from DS9.

That's what Dukat claims, at any rate. But Dukat is a lying bastard. For all we know, his transporter relay thingy only moved Kira to a ship waiting right next to DS9, and she was then taken the rest of the way by conventional means.

I mean, if the Jem'Hadar truly possessed an interstellar transporter, that should have been part of their tactics and general strategy. Sure, their transporter might have slightly superior range, in addition to being shield-piercing and all. But interstellar? Dukat would benefit from lying, as he would be establishing a false timetable for Kira's abduction and making her think that her friends had not yet had time to react. Dukat would also be painting a picture of himself as the master of advanced technologies - and as a master villain with a surefire escape plan if anything went wrong.

Or then he could be plain nuts. The episode lends plenty of support for that theory, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Blueicus]

There have been several mentions of long range transporters in TNG and VOY, although each one had their drawbacks. It's not implausible for some of these people to have had access to one as a result of collecting alien artifacts.