History Main / StealthInSpace

In reality, stealth in space is [[ArtisticLicenseSpace a lot harder than people think]]. (More on that in the [[Analysis/StealthInSpace Analysis subpage]].) As such, most writers either HandWave the whole business, pretending that ships in space are [[SpaceIsAnOcean like submarines in the ocean]] and thus naturally stealthy, or rely on some heavy-duty AppliedPhlebotinum to make thermodynamics go away. These problems can be circumvented to a certain extent by manipulating your setting's TechnologyLevels, which don't need to conform to modern technology; for example, a period-accurate RaygunGothic story set in the [[{{Zeerust}} retro-future]] would have rocketry and even atomic power, [[SchizoTech but not]] the sort of high-resolution thermographic cameras and high-capacity visual processing computer power necessary to detect and analyze a cloaked ship the way we could today. It's not common for a harder sci-fi to have vaguely plausible stealth, but there are some.

*** In case it wasn't obvious, this works well, because the Jedi pilots of the Stealth-X fighters have their own built-in and incredibly effective set of [[TheForce sensors]], thus avoiding the "flying blind" problem noted above for craft attempting to be stealthy by not using active sensors.

** The Universal Century series (starting from [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam the original series]] up until [[Anime/MobileSuityVictoryGundam Victory]], set seven decades later in UC0153) gets off somewhat easy by {{Minovsky P|hysics}}articles that scramble electromagnetic sensors, reducing detection to heat sensors, cameras and the old Mk. I Eyeball. In several Universal Century series, stealth is usually done through the use of "dummies": rapidly-inflating balloons that have the same general shape as a mobile suit or a space cruiser (or an asteroid). It is difficult to tell them apart from the real thing from a distance, except that they don't move or shoot back. Countering this technique is why there are EWAC (Early Warning And Control) versions of mobile suits, since they are able to use long range sensors and the like to confirm whether an approaching enemy force is as big as it seems or is relying on dummies to inflate their numbers.

** In ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' the idea of a ship that can fire while cloaked, the Reman ''Scimitar'', comes up. However it becomes especially implausible here because the ship does not just fire a few shots here and there. It fires almost constantly as it attacks the ''Enterprise''. By any logic this should reveal its position, speed and trajectory even if the ship itself were invisible; and, in fact, it does, and the ''Enterprise'' is able to maintain fairly accurate return fire (though less than it would be able to do if the cloak was off). However, unlike other ships in the franchise, the ''Scimitar'' could retain its shields while cloaked, so taking a few hits wasn't a big deal the way it was with other ships, and it would never be quite clear to an attacker what if any effect the hits were having. (It also has a much bigger power plant than most starships, turning into a LightningBruiser that can -- and does -- have the defenses and weapons to win three-on-one fights.)

*** In one episode, the very flashy, humongous ''Enterprise''-D succeeds in hiding in a starship graveyard by powering down and pretending to be one of the wrecks. While typical scavengers might be drawn to a still-intact ''Galaxy''-class starship (to say nothing of suspicious of how such a ship could be there at all, since the ''Galaxy''-class is still state of the art, with all examples either still in Starfleet service or destroyed rather catastrophically), the particular smugglers they were after were only interested in intercepting a pre-arranged transfer of equipment, so they weren't paying attention to the derelicts.

** In ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' the idea of a ship that can fire while cloaked, the Reman ''Scimitar'', comes up. However it becomes especially implausible here because the ship does not just fire a few shots here and there. It fires almost constantly as it attacks the ''Enterprise''. By any logic this should reveal its position, speed and trajectory even if the ship itself were invisible; and, in fact, it does, and the ''Enterprise'' is able to maintain fairly accurate return fire (though less than it would be able to do if the cloak was off). However, unlike other ships in the franchise, the ''Scimitar'' could retain its shields while cloaked, so taking a few hits wasn't a big deal the way it was with other ships, and it would never be quite clear to an attacker what if any effect the hits were having. (It also has a much bigger power plant than most starships, turning into a LightningBruiser that can -- and does -- have the defenses and weapons to win three-on-one fights.)

*** In one episode, the very flashy, humongous ''Enterprise''-D succeeds in hiding in a starship graveyard by pretending to be one of the wrecks. While typical scavengers might be drawn to a still-intact ''Galaxy''-class starship, the particular smugglers they were after were only interested in intercepting a pre-arranged transfer of equipment, so they weren't paying attention to the derelicts.

In reality, stealth in space is [[ArtisticLicenseSpace a lot harder than people think]]. (More on that in the [[Analysis/StealthInSpace Analysis subpage]].) As such, most writers either HandWave the whole business, pretending that ships in space are [[SpaceIsAnOcean like submarines in the ocean]] and thus naturally stealthy, or rely on some heavy-duty AppliedPhlebotinum to make thermodynamics go away. These problems can be circumvented to a certain extent by manipulating your setting's TechnologyLevels, which don't need to conform to modern technology; for example, a period-accurate RaygunGothic story set in the [[{{Zeerust}} retro-future]] would have rocketry and even atomic power, [[SchizoTech but not]] the sort of high-resolution thermographic cameras and high-capacity visual processing computer power necessary to detect and analyze a cloaked ship the way we could today. It's not common for a show that is high on the MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness to have vaguely plausible stealth, but there are some.

* In the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' books, this is a key element of the space combat. All ships rely on gravity-themed AppliedPhlebotinum for propulsion, but gravity drives can be detected for a great distance, regardless of lightspeed limitations. A ship with the gravity wedge turned ''off'' is considered essentially invisible-- largely because the ranges involved in Honorverse battles are extreme even by space standards, so it would take a prohibitively high-res telescope to spot them by their electromagnetic emissions. Even with the wedge on, the ships also have stealth systems which dampen or alter the signature of an active drive. The series' surprising [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness adherence to certain elements of physics]] means that, in at least one interesting example, a small, patchwork force took out one far greater numerically without even being fired upon simply by using chemical thrusters to get moving and then opening up with all the weapons at point-blank range against an opponent who had no clue they were even physically in the system.

** In the ''Void Trilogy'' almost all spaceships basically hide in hyperspace, or manipulate [[TechnoBabble quantum]] [[HandWave states]]. The more advanced the technology, the better they are at hiding. This makes the ''Void Trilogy'' significantly [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness softer]] than the ''Commonwealth Saga'', where there is almost no stealth.

* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' gets off somewhat easy by {{Minovsky P|hysics}}articles that scramble electromagnetic sensors, reducing detection to heat sensors and the old Mk. I Eyeball. It doesn't have too much in the way of actual stealth, but it is possible to sneak very close to an enemy if you know what you're doing.
** In the Universal Century, stealth is usually done through the use of "dummies": rapidly-inflating balloons that have the same general shape as a mobile suit or a space cruiser (or an asteroid). It is difficult to tell them apart from the real thing from a distance, except that they don't move or shoot back. Another common method is to have a mobile suit shut down while clinging to an asteroid or piece of space debris (which there is plenty of thanks to the One Year War), then surprising the enemy by suddenly switching on and attacking.

* Kimball Kinnison acquires a [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal stealth space speedster]] in the ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' series. It's stealthy by dint of being visually undetectable apart from obscuring the odd star thanks to being painted with near-perfectly-absorbent black paint, being made with no iron alloys to avoid magnetic detection, and having a "detector nullifier" to scramble his universe's equivalent of radar (and presumably IR detection as well).

* In ''Anime/OutlawStar'', the [=McDougall=] Brothers use a very simple and straightforward means of avoiding detection: hiding behind asteroids until they're ready to attack.

** Averted in ''The Nano Flower''. The head of a SETI project is consulted on whether an alien could have arrived undetected on Earth. He points out that the power needed to move a spacecraft across interstellar distances is colossal, so "...the plasma from the reaction drive would scream like a nova across the radio bands. We'd spot it half a light-year out." And a wormhole large enough for a spaceship to travel through would create gravitational distortions that would be easily picked up on the gravity-wave detectors currently used by scientists to study general relativity.

* In the ''Void Trilogy'' by Creator/PeterFHamilton, almost all spaceships basically hide in hyperspace, or manipulate [[TechnoBabble quantum]] [[HandWave states]]. The more advanced the technology, the better they are at hiding. This makes the ''Void Trilogy'' significantly [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness softer]] than the ''Commonwealth Saga'', where there is almost no stealth.

In reality, stealth in space is [[SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay a lot harder than people think]]. (More on that in the [[Analysis/StealthInSpace Analysis subpage]].) As such, most writers either HandWave the whole business, pretending that ships in space are [[SpaceIsAnOcean like submarines in the ocean]] and thus naturally stealthy, or rely on some heavy-duty AppliedPhlebotinum to make thermodynamics go away. These problems can be circumvented to a certain extent by manipulating your setting's TechnologyLevels, which don't need to conform to modern technology; for example, a period-accurate RaygunGothic story set in the [[{{Zeerust}} retro-future]] would have rocketry and even atomic power, [[SchizoTech but not]] the sort of high-resolution thermographic cameras and high-capacity visual processing computer power necessary to detect and analyze a cloaked ship the way we could today. It's not common for a show that is high on the MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness to have vaguely plausible stealth, but there are some.

** In "Stardrive", Avon decides to sneak past the detection grid of a planet by hugging close to an asteroid. RealityEnsues and the ''Scorpio'' side-swipes the asteroid, severely damaging the ship.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'', which makes a real effort to keep the physics plausible apart from the eponymous 'addition', has a prototype system on the SSV ''Normandy'' that works by storing the excess heat into an internal heat sink - which can only be done for a limited period of time before it needs venting, or else the personnel will be cooked. The ship's own mass-effect drive is then used to create gravity wells that the ship "falls" into, thus propelling it without the need of physical emissions. The ship is thus rendered "heatless" and invisible to IR scanners, but does not employ optic camouflage and is still visible to anyone peering out a window. This proves especially effective against the Geth and uniquely allows direct boarding actions against them simply because Geth designs don't feature windows. But because the stealth system is extremely new and extremely secret, no one has yet developed countermeasures against it (until the sequel, where more ships are using this technology; in the third game, Reapers can also track you once you've sent out enough radar pulses). However, the stealth systems only work while not moving at FTL speeds since any energy passing through the ME field automatically gets blue-shifted. A sudden flare of blue-shifted energy indicates the presence of an FTL mass effect field.

** Also of note is the black globe generator. Looking to make DeflectorShields "realistic," what they came up with was a barrier that absorbs all energy. Hence, no traces and total stealth. However, it also means the ship is surrounded in a field of darkness, so while you couldn't see the ship, the mysterious black sphere would occlude the stars behind it, so it could be detected by sight, if you knew what to look for.

* The novel ''Force Cantrithor'' by Michael McClosky, because spaceships involve putting out huge amounts of energy for thrust and weapons, easily giving themselves away, stealth in space is impossible under normal conditions. So humanity and the hostile alien [[StarfishAliens Vothriles]] use a workaround in the form of "emmers", people capable of [[MagnetismManipulation reading and manipulating magnetic fields]] to conceal their EM output en masse, effectively achieving invisibility to sensors. Stealth in these instances is compared to fighting in a dark stadium with laser pointers and handguns: you can easily hide effectively, but so much as looking around or shooting is going to give you away. Hence space battles become a game of cat and mouse, and relies on feints, evasive maneuvers, and attempts at getting the enemy to give themselves away. The war is put on hold as the mysterious and eponymous Force Cantrithor tears through Vothrile space and forces both sides to [[EnemyMine fight a common enemy]], and the [[TeethClenchedTeamwork many missteps]] of two hostile forces as they try to get along.

* Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''The Last Theorem'' subverted and lampshaded this trope. The Grand Galactics ordered One Point Five's armada to immediately slow down, and to remain undetected from [[spoiler:humans]]. They immediately decelerate, but wonder how are they suppose to keep themselves hidden if gigajoules of energy were poured out from 154 spaceships at once. They, of course, then get detected.
** Clarke also used another space-stealth rationale in his short story "Superiority". A space-warping field literally put light-years of extra distance between the generating ship and the rest of the universe, thus putting it far beyond detection range. Of course, this worked both ways, and the device turned out to have [[CoolButInefficient other problems]] as well.

** ''Franchise/Star WarsLegends'' is pretty true to RealLife when it comes to this stuff. It has cloaking devices that generate a field around the ship that bends light, sensor beams, and (it would be imagined) other radiant energy around the ship... but just as no one can see in, no one can see out, so they're rarely used. [[Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy Thrawn]] got around the two-way cloaking problem by using the cloaking field to hide booby traps within an uncloaked, innocent-looking freighter. The New Republic could see that the freighters were carrying ''something'' by measuring their mass, but they didn't know ''what'' until the trap was sprung. Later, he got around the no-communication thing [[MagnificentBastard by means of]] careful timing and Joruus C'baoth's Battle Meditation.

* Oldina's ship in ''Anime/Figure17TsubasaAndHikaru'', which orbits Earth for the better part of a year, avoids detection with some sort of cloaking device despite at one point firing a gigantic ''laser cannon'' at Hokkaido while trying to blow up an alien.
** Part of the cloaking technology, or a technology used in conjunction with it, throws up an illusion of normality over a location until it can be cleaned up, along with a with a field that [[BystanderSyndrome makes people just... disregard it]], and assume there's no need to investigate further. Thus, the crash site of DD's shuttle is never discovered when a policeman goes to investigate, and the abortive attempt at using Oldeena's ship's WaveMotionGun as a KillSat is considered nothing more than a particularly weird, atmospheric light show after attempts to investigate turn up nothing.

* The Shangri La in ''Manga/TowardTheTerra'' can become completely invisible to any form of detection, although since it's powered more or less completely [[PsychicPowers by its occupants' thoughts]], the problem of engine heat probably doesn't apply. The heat ''of'' those occupants still applies.
** Since they're using PsychicPowers, though, the physics don't apply on the other end, either -- they just prevented ''people'' from noticing their ship using MindControl and directly disrupted enemy instruments using their powers, which doesn't require actually masking their heat.

* ''LightNovel/StarshipOperators'' has a plausible example. The stealth ship moves by initial speed before the jump, and runs with most systems off to reduce emission. Having said that, it takes so long to close to engagement range that the ''Amaterasu''[='s=] crew is able to find and pre-emptively destroy it.
** And the way it is found is by [[spoiler: the good old "looking out of the window" trick. But note that they used up almost their entire missile ammunition in storage to generate enough back lighting to see the stealth ship.]]

** In ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' the idea of a ship that can fire while cloaked, the Reman ''Scimitar'', comes up. However it becomes especially implausible here because the ship does not just fire a few shots here and there. It fires almost constantly as it attacks the ''Enterprise''. By any logic this should reveal its position, speed and trajectory even if the ship itself were invisible; and, in fact, it does, and the ''Enterprise'' is able to maintain fairly accurate return fire (though less than it would be able to do if the shields were up). However, unlike other ships in the franchise, the ''Scimitar'' could retain its shields while cloaked, so taking a few hits wasn't a big deal the way it was with other ships, and it would never be quite clear to an attacker what if any effect the hits were having. (It also has a much bigger power plant than most starships, turning into a LightningBruiser that can -- and does -- have the defenses and weapons to win three-on-one fights.)

* ''Franchise/{{Star Wars|ExpandedUniverse}}'' is pretty true to RealLife when it comes to this stuff. It has cloaking devices that generate a field around the ship that bends light, sensor beams, and (it would be imagined) other radiant energy around the ship... but just as no one can see in, no one can see out, so they're rarely used. [[Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy Thrawn]] got around the two-way cloaking problem by using the cloaking field to hide booby traps within an uncloaked, innocent-looking freighter. The Republic could see that the freighters were carrying ''something'' by measuring their mass, but they didn't know ''what'' until the trap was sprung. Later, he got around the no-communication thing [[MagnificentBastard by means of]] careful timing and Joruus C'baoth's Battle Meditation.
** In a lower-tech example, at one point Talon Karrde hides from Thrawn by hiding behind an asteroid on the understanding that if they so much as turn on their engines while the Star Destroyer is still there, they ''will'' be noticed. Of course, Thrawn already ''knew'' he was there given his psychological profile, but he was not aware of the presence of Mara Jade and her Force-sensitivity ...
** Admiral Ackbar also notes that any cloaked ship under power could be tracked by its emissions. This is later tried, and only fails because it is attempted on a cloaked asteroid. This being Thrawn's third method of bypassing the cloaking device's limitations: dropping a bunch of cloaked asteroids into unstable orbit around the New Republic's capital world. This required the planetary shields to be kept up indefinitely while attempts were made to clear the asteroids... without even being able to know ''how many'' there are to clear.

** There's also [[Literature/TheCourtshipOfPrincessLeia Nightcloak]] technology, which draws in all light into its satellites... which results in a not-at-all-stealthy chunk of missing starscape. It has very few, very complicated uses.
*** Like planetary deep freeze and a complete biological holocaust.
** In general, altogether more effort in the Star Wars verse is put into disguising a warship as something else, rather than hiding it. Warships, especially pocket carriers disguised as freighters are quite common. Fiddling with IFF projectors and specific gravity (to fool [[Literature/NewJediOrder dovin basals]]) also comes up regularly. On the less orthodox end of the scale, one favorite [[Literature/XWingSeries X-Wing]] tactic is to wait for something to drop into atmo - a meteor shower, say, or debris from a destroyed ship - affix ablative plates to the fighters (which burn up on reentry), and drop in alongside the perfectly innocent debris, only pulling up when underneath effective sensor altitudes.
** "Stealth-field generators" in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' appear to use chameleonic techniques rather than outright invisibility (and no one has tried using them out of atmosphere, at least in canon), but Goto's Yacht still has some explaining to do... (granted with all the traffic at Nar Shadda, hiding in plain sight isn't hard).

** Thrawn probably also deployed smaller ships to flit in and out of the cloaking fields at one point, so that the Star Destroyers wouldn't have to expose themselves. He may also have used small cloaked drones, basically a turbolaser with an engine, to simulate Star Destroyers firing through planetary defense shields, by placing them so that it appeared the turbolaser beam fired straight through when in actuality the beam impacted on the shield then the cloaked drones fired from their [[TheChessmaster meticously planned]] positions.

** In ''The Empire Strikes Back'' Han managed to be stealthy in a low-tech manner. He docked to the back of a capital ship, where his hull and heat signature would easily be missed. When they jettisoned waste, which would have residual heat from being on board, he drifted away in it under low power. [[CrazyPrepared Boba Fett was not fooled]].

** In ''Literature/LegacyOfTheForce'' and ''Literature/FateOfTheJedi'' book series, Jedi regularly use Stealth-X fighters. These use things like emissions discipline as opposed to "Cloaking Devices", and are used more like RealLife stealth planes. In ''Allies'', this is {{discussed|Trope}}:

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' brought in a cloaked vessel that was apparently visual cloaking only. Anakin was unable to see it at all in the hangar from a distance of 10 feet or so, while the villain was able to fire torpedoes at it by having them follow the magnetic signature.
** The ship was unable to fire while cloaked, possible due to power reasons.
** Also, the crew was able to see and scan through their own cloak.

* Averted in ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. It's pointed out that even when ''Voyager'' doesn't have its Cochrane Drive engaged, they can still be detected by the heat generated by their power and life support systems. Later the Caretaker shows them an experimental cloaking device which he points out is useless for any practical purpose, as the user can't see out either.

** ''[[Anime/GundamReconguistaInG G-Reco]]'' uses stealth in a similar way to Universal Century using Minovsky particles. The MSV has the CAMS-05 Black Mack which uses its extremely low surface area in its flight mode together with a dark colour scheme to take advantage of tjis during infiltration missions.

* Creator/CJCherryh's Literature/AllianceUnion universe has an interesting take on stealth: anything in {{hyperspace}} is totally invisible (or is at least going faster than anything coming from it, so you only know it's there after it's gone) and is going so fast when it drops out that it doesn't really matter, so one tactic that is mentioned as something even the Kif won't use due to [[MutuallyAssuredDestruction MAD]] is to drop out near a target and drop off a large bomb as you go screaming through the system before going back into hyperspace. Of course, this is more of a problem when dealing with the species that can stop instantly out of hyperspace and [[StarfishAlien are unable to understand the concept of traffic laws]].

* The novel ''Force Cantrithor'' by Michael McClosky, because spaceships involve putting out huge amounts of energy for thrust and weapons, easily giving themselves away, stealth in space is impossible under normal conditions. So humanity and the hostile alien [[StarfishAlien Vothriles]] use a workaround in the form of "emmers", people capable of [[MagnetismManipulation reading and manipulating magnetic fields]] to conceal their EM output en masse, effectively achieving invisibility to sensors. Stealth in these instances is compared to fighting in a dark stadium with laser pointers and handguns: you can easily hide effectively, but so much as looking around or shooting is going to give you away. Hence space battles become a game of cat and mouse, and relies on feints, evasive maneuvers, and attempts at getting the enemy to give themselves away. The war is put on hold as the mysterious and eponymous Force Cantrithor tears through Vothrile space and forces both sides to [[EnemyMine fight a common enemy]], and the [[TeethClenchedTeamwork many missteps]] of two hostile forces as they try to get along.