HOLO-CLOAK TECHNOLOGY Theory:  LtCmdr Steven Davis Specs:  LtJg Salek

USS Galileo using the holo-cloak to project massive hull damage.

Introduction A holo-cloak is hybrid of cloaking and holographic technology.  In short where the cloak tries to look like nothing, the holo-cloak tries to look like something e.g. an asteroid, a small gas cloud or another ship.  The defensive and offensive potential for such a device are limitless. Design The holo-cloak uses both cloaking and holographic technology.  Holographic emitters are placed at strategic points around the ships hull.  It is these emitters that project the image of the object the ship is to imitate (see Figure 1).  The device acts as a normal cloak but with the addition of an extra shield layer.  The extra shield layer acts as a projection screen accepting the holographic projections and passes them through the rest of the cloaking layers (see Figure 2). It is not enough for the holo-cloak to make a ship physical look like something, it also has to trick sensors (an asteroid with no physical mass would look strange!).  Modifying the cloaking field to give off the desired signature information does this. Instead of redirecting EM radiation as in a normal cloak (cloaks normal function is to redirect all EM radiation away from a cloaked vessel) the holo-cloak allows it to interact with the signature(thus allowing sensors to detect the signature) while still hiding the ship underneath.  The signature would hold all the natural information you would expect to find when using sensors.

Figure 1:  USS Galileo using holo emitters to project image onto shielding.

Figure 2:  Final result as seen through ship viewer and sensors.

Limitations 1. The size and complexity of the object it is trying to imitate limit the holo-cloak.  On the other hand low-resolution holographic (for distant objects) projections would leave more energy available to other systems, as would less complicated signatures. 2. It is very difficult to maintain conventional shields. The power drain of the device doesn't permit any other significant energy expenditure, especially on a large ship. 3. No weapons can be fired from the cloaked object, because it is a double-sided shield. It blocks all energy (i.e. phasers) from the object by redirecting it back at the object. Similarly, it is resistant to mechanical intrusions from the inside, like photon torpedoes. 4. Normally sensors become extremely limited as no EM radiation enters the cloak but the holo-cloak can be re-configured to allow active sensors. Using active sensors would aide in detection. 5. The cloaking device, like shields, interferes with the warp drive due to the space-time distortion it creates. Cloaked vessels have a much lower warp speed that a similar ship with out cloak. 6. The cloaking device cannot block incoming FTL particles, i.e. tachyons.