Stealth Technology?

frostytheplebe

frostytheplebe

Seventh Part of the Seal
I just watched the movie again and took quite an interest in the part where Angel shoots down the skipper missile. The missile, being computer guided, needs to decloak to get a radar lock.

It would appear that Confed knew about these as Mr. Obutu was able to quickly identify what it was. Even if they didn't know about them, they now had proof that the Kilrathi had stealth technology. I guess the obvious question is, if they knew the Kilrathi had this stealth technology, why was Blair's claims about stealth fighters so unbelievable? Angel herself saw stealth technology for herself, yet she refused to believe Blair when he said that he had seen the same tech applied to fighters?
 
My guess is that it has to do with the type of cloak the skippers use. When an object is cloaked, light doesn't interact with it, so as long as you can't see it, it can't see you. Because of this, it needs to decloak to maintain it's course to the target.

Even if Confed knew about skippers, the cloaking device would make stealth fighters useless in a combat situation. What use is a fighter that blinds its pilot while cloaked?

Definitely not canon, but it's my guess.
 
I think that's what LOAF said: the step up to stealth fighters was too much. Though, now that I think about it, Tolwyn says "Your ridiculous claim about a Kilrathi cloaking device!" (IIRC), speaking in general. But since that WCATV episode ("Invisible enemy") Tolwyn has problems with stealth fighters.

It makes Angel look a bit more unfriendly though.

(Personally, even if everything can be explained, I though the addition of Stealth technology to the movie and WCATV was not too smart. At least they should not have the main characters deal with it and kill off the ones who encountered them. But that's just my personal opinion.)
 
Mekt-Hakkikt said:
I think that's what LOAF said: the step up to stealth fighters was too much. Though, now that I think about it, Tolwyn says "Your ridiculous claim about a Kilrathi cloaking device!" (IIRC), speaking in general. But since that WCATV episode ("Invisible enemy") Tolwyn has problems with stealth fighters.
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You need to remember that the stealth fighter in WCATV does not have a cloaking device!

I uses a passive, non-visual, form of stealth - in a sense an F-117 Nighthawk in space -
The fighter simply won't show up on radar and normal sensor, and is painted black so it will be hard to see - Hard but not impossible, since it is not invisible.

The Strakha which destroy the Tiger's Claw are visually invisible (aside of being stealthy to sensors and radar like the WCATV Strakha).

EDIT: what I meant to add about Tolwyn is that stealth fighters are not new to him "...but COM'ON! Invisible fighters?... what else? winged pink-elephants flying 'BEAR'CAP?..."
Blair's claims about "invisible fighters" is simply too much for him to except.
 
Remember, there's a lot we don't know about stealth technology that might mean a cloaked missile is easy but a cloaked fighter is hard. Like, maybe the easy way to make a cloaking field is lethal to carbon based life? Or maybe the amount of energy to cloak an object scales with the fifth or sixth power of its size, meaning short a a breakthrough, going from a missile to a fighter is impossible?
 
Or maybe, given that a Skipper only cloaks for a few seconds at a time, there are problems with making a cloak that can be held for a long period of time. Maybe the circuits get overloaded by the constant use.

If the cloak that Pliers builds in WC4 is at all similar to the ones that the Kilrathi use (a good bet, given that he gets assistance from Melek's engineers to improve it for the second mission where you use it), then Kilrathi and Confed cloaking technology is dependent on using components made of some sort of rare crystal that can break if overloaded, as Pliers explains.
 
Mekt-Hakkikt said:
(Personally, even if everything can be explained, I though the addition of Stealth technology to the movie and WCATV was not too smart. At least they should not have the main characters deal with it and kill off the ones who encountered them. But that's just my personal opinion.)
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I agree with you on this. Even if the stealth tech used on the skipper missile was incompatable with a fighter, the fact would still remain that the Kilrathi HAD stealth technology and, given thier technological advances, it would not be as easy to dismiss the possibility of cloaked fighters as Tolwyn did.
 
"If the cloak that Pliers builds in WC4 is at all similar to the ones that the Kilrathi use (a good bet, given that he gets assistance from Melek's engineers to improve it for the second mission where you use it), then Kilrathi and Confed cloaking technology is dependent on using components made of some sort of rare crystal that can break if overloaded, as Pliers explains"


The Kilrathi must have had a world or two were they could be easily mined. Maybe Gorha kar, was such a world because in WC2 Thrakath makes it a point to destroy the stealth technology. Maybe he was trying to destroy the crystal mines as well.
 
I agree with you on this. Even if the stealth tech used on the skipper missile was incompatable with a fighter, the fact would still remain that the Kilrathi HAD stealth technology and, given thier technological advances, it would not be as easy to dismiss the possibility of cloaked fighters as Tolwyn did.
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I don't know if that really makes sense - if the word from upstairs is that a two-way cloak (or an organic cloak) is technologically impossible then no one will believe it exists.
 
Maybe there's a Jaws defense for Tolwyn.
Perhaps he denied the possibility out of hand because he knew there was, or a good possibility, of stealth fighters and he didn't want it on the official record for fear of damaging the morale of the troops or causing panic and paranoia amongst the populace.
 
Or maybe he just didn't want to believe it himself because it was just too horrifying a thought to imagine that the Kilrathi really had truly undetectable fighters.
 
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