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11->''"Stealthiness in space was a bit like playing hide-and-seek while naked in a brier patch: it could be done, but it was a thorny business that depended upon the fact that nobody would believe you were crazy enough to actually try to pull it off."''
12-->-- '''J. Daniel Sawyer''', ''Free Will (and Other Compulsions)''
13
14Stealth, be it camouflage or outright {{invisibility|Cloak}}, is often a deciding factor in many forms of combat. In fiction, [[SeeTheWhitesOfTheirEyes this should apply to spaceship combat, too]].
15
16In reality, stealth in space is [[ArtisticLicenseSpace a lot harder than people think]], and InvisibilityWithDrawbacks is the name of the game. (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.
17
18----
19!!Examples:
20[[foldercontrol]]
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22[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
23* ''Literature/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]].
24* ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'': BigBad King Vega's tactic during his army's offensive final depended on being stealth: He cloaked his personal starship with a kind of reflective shield, hoping their squads of mini-ufos kept the heroes busy and distracted enough to not notice him as he descended to Earth. Of course, [[spoiler:it did not work.]]
25* 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 would normally still apply... But since they're using PsychicPowers, the physics don't apply on the other end, either -- they just prevented their opponents from noticing their ship using MindControl and directly disrupted enemy instruments using their powers, which doesn't require actually masking their heat.
26* 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. Apparently 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.
27* ''Anime/{{Robotech}}'' features Shadow Devices, which prevent long range detection by protoculture emissions, but do nothing in visual range.
28* The ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' universe features passive stealth systems (design shape and materials to absorb and scatter sensors away from the enemy) in the VF-17S Nightmare from ''Anime/MacrossPlus'' and ''Anime/Macross7''. However, in ''Macross Plus'', the YF-19 and the YF-21 both feature an "Active Stealth System", which bends electromagnetic waves around the fighter, effectively making it invisible to all but optical targeting systems. The VF-25 in ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'' does not appear to have this system, but ''Macross Frontier'' is a little tight-lipped on the technical details of its mecha.
29** Keep in mind that Valkyries are Transatmospheric Superiority Fighters, meaning they're designed for combat in atmospheric conditions as well as in space. In fact, the one time the Active Stealth system is specifically demonstrated in ''Macross Plus'', the YF-21 is well within Eden's atmosphere.
30* In ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', an alien ship keeps itself hidden by ''being mirror coated''. So ''very'' wrong.
31* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'':
32** The Universal Century series (starting from [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam the original series]] up until ''[[Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam 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.
33*** 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.
34** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED Gundam SEED]]'' and ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDDestiny Gundam SEED Destiny]]'' have radar-jamming Phlebotinum (N-Jammers rather than Minovsky particles), but also has the [[InvisibilityCloak Mirage Colloid system]], which uses microscopic prisms contained in a magnetic field to bend light around the ship/mobile suit, rendering it invisible to the naked eye and radar. Heat coming from the life support systems is contained or redirected by the field, but if the ship or mobile suit fires its thrusters, the hot exhaust trail will give it away.
35*** The ''Girty Lue'' class assault carrier (the first of which was captained by [[TheDragon Neo Roanoke]]) gets around this problem by equipping both Mirage Colloid technology, and a stealth propulsion system that uses jets of pressurised gas to move the ship without emitting a thermal signature.
36*** The Testament Gundam from ''[[Manga/MobileSuitGundamSeedAstray Gundam SEED Astray]]'' uses a novel method for stealth: it injects a virus into surrounding mobile suits that edits the Testament out of camera footage. It's still perfectly visible via line-of-sight, but since all mobile suit pilots depend on their cameras to see things, it might as well be completely invisible. In order to utilize the "look out a window" method as a counter, the heroes ''install a window'' on one of their own mobile suits.
37** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing Gundam Wing]]'' has Deathscythe, whose stealth systems include radar jammers and (for the MidSeasonUpgrade) optical camouflage. It might also get a leg up thanks to its use of Gundanium for armor, which is stated to be electrically neutral, highly heat-resistant and radar-dampening (simply: electromagnetic wave absorbing).
38** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam00 Gundam 00]]'' has ''GN particles'', which at the very least have been shown to frizz all conventional sensors in a large area (rather than actually preventing detection). This is effective against both new and old enemies as few if any designs allow the pilots to use their Mk. I eyeballs and rely on CGI-augmented cameras instead. While they do gain outlandish properties in the second season, the particles haven't been shown making objects invisible.
39*** A particularly iconic example is the Throne Drei 'stealth' unit, which releases a tremendous and visually striking cloud of ''bright red'' false GN particles to conceal its allies. Much like with some forms of modern [=ECM=], this makes it obvious that enemies are present but leaves you with no idea exactly where they are or ''how many'' there are.
40*** Celestial Being's Gundam's also have outright optical cloaking systems, but they can't be used if the Gundam is doing anything but sitting there in standby mode, as simply turning on the GN drive will render it visible, making it useless for stealth missions or in combat. Instead they're used to hide the Gundam's while their pilots are out and about on earth.
41** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamAge Gundam Age]]'' has the Invisible Umbrella system used by the Vagan and later reverse engineered by Bisidian pirates. All warships including the 1km+ long Fa Bose class and space stations have this system although its use in mobile suits appear to be relatively rare.
42** ''[[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 this during infiltration missions.
43* ''Anime/MartianSuccessorNadesico'' had an interesting version of this. In order to bait a Jovian ship, Yurika used... fishing tactics. Which meant shutting off the Nadesico completely and having the Aestivalises manually launch and just sit and wait. Using pressurized gas to move just enough to throw the Jovians off, they waited until they got close and got the drop on them. The Jovians were actually impressed by their captain and wished him the best... which was an insult to Yurika.
44* ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato'' and [[Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato2199 its remake]] have subspace submarines, that achieve stealth by [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin diving into subspace]] (both versions are big on the SpaceIsAnOcean trope), with the added advantage of making the boat effectively invulnerable. They do, however, have their problems: for starters, they are effectively blind when 'submerged', depending on a ''periscope'' to see the target, a periscope that, differently from the rest of the boat, can be detected (not easily) and destroyed; another problem is that they depend on particular torpedoes capable of emerging from subspace to attack, torpedoes that come in a limited supply; then there's the problem that when on 'surface' they are markedly inferior in weapons and armour to conventional ships, meaning they need to stay submerged to survive; finally, it ''is'' possible to develop a 'subspace sonar' to detect them, at which point a ship in normal space could theoretically counterattack with 'subspace depth charges' based on the same technology of the sub's own torpedoes. For all these reasons, they're only used for ambushes.
45* In ''Manga/OutlawStar'', the [=McDougall=] Brothers use a very simple and straightforward means of avoiding detection: hiding behind asteroids until they're ready to attack.
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48[[folder:Asian Animation]]
49* ''Animation/{{Mechamato}}'': The crash-landed spacecraft which served as the prison for bad robots remains cloaked after the crash, but Amato remembers its location and finds it despite the ship's invisibility.
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52[[folder:Comic Books]]
53* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
54** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': In its earliest appearances Wonder Woman's invisible "plane" was a fully functional stealth spacecraft which ran almost entirely silently and was not visible to the naked eye.
55** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': When Diana is running an interplanetary revolution against the Sangtee Empire her tech people come up with a very practical way of implementing stealth in their attacks on Sangtee ships and convoys; remotely hacking the enemy ship's scanners and sensory equipment prior to approach.
56* ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'': Averted. The Chitauri does have it, but the main armada did not use it. As they are in a hurry and do not have time for an invasion, they want to retrieve their fellow Chitauri from earth and blow up the planet, so why care with it?
57[[/folder]]
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59[[folder:Fan Works]]
60* In ''Fanfic/AnimorphsRedux The Extreme'', a complex chain of events sees the Animorphs acquire an invisible spaceship during a mission, but Ax explicitly notes that this ship would only be invisible so long as the Animorphs do nothing to draw attention to its presence, such as start shooting at other ships.
61* ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Ikharos's jumpship, the ''Shadow Trespass'', uses an [[{{Technobabble}} electromagnetic sight-sheath]] to generate a stealth field around itself that keeps it from being seen by other ships.
62* In ''Fanfic/{{Origins}}'', ''Normandy SR-2.5'' receives a hyper-advanced cloaking device from the Republic Intelligence Service. It uses the traditional AppliedPhlebotinum for "no-blind" ''Star Wars'' cloaking devices ("stygium"), with all its attendant downsides (burnout through use, inability to conceal emissions exceeding normal running, high power consumption relative to ship reactor size). Cerberus uses subterfuge to get their hands on the more-common "hibridium" type (as stygium is specifically noted to be extremely rare), but the whole plan fails as the platform it is mounted on [[StuffBlowingUp explodes]] due to improper construction. The Trans-Galactic Republic also likes to gather intelligence using ''[[VideoGame/TIEFighter Vorknkx]]'' spy ships which have cloaking as well (both hibridium and stygium).
63* ''Fanfic/RedFireRedPlanet'' combines ''Franchise/StarTrek'' cloaking devices (and known flaws from the shows) with misdirection. Brokosh gets a fleet of Birds-of-Prey into the Sol system to attack Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards by having his own [=BoP=] the ''mupwI[='=]'' generate an oversize warp field to pretend to be a Starfleet battleship. This mostly hides the minor fluctuations produced by the other [=BoPs=] using cloaks at warp ([=DS9=]: "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E01TheSearchPartI The Search, Part I]]") in the interference. One [=BoP=] has to fall out of the formation due to reactor trouble and is spotted because of a gravitic anomaly it's giving off (implied to be the ArtificialGravity). Its captain chooses to blow away the shuttle that picked it up, blowing the KDF's cover (but not soon enough to do any good).
64* Averted in ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. It's pointed out that even when ''Voyager'' doesn't have its [[NuclearTorchRocket 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 anymore than an observer could see in.
65[[/folder]]
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67[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
68* In ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'', the Gunstar does not have stealth but avoids detection [[spoiler:by hiding with power off, inside an asteroid]].
69* ''Franchise/StarTrek:''
70** Kirk manages to avoid detection by Khan in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' by directing the ''Enterprise'' into a nearby [[SpaceClouds nebula]] which was flooded with sensor-jamming electromagnetic radiation and severely limited visibility. This effectively cloaked ''both'' ships, but since Kirk had more experience fighting battles in space he had the advantage.
71** ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock'' had the Enterprise being stalked by a cloaked Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Realizing something was wrong because the USS Grissom was supposed to be in orbit, Kirk and crew were able to identify the ship with their naked eye due to a slight distortion effect. When the Klingons decloak in an attempt at a surprise attack, the Enterprise were able to fire on them first. If the Enterprise wasn't manned by [[WorfHadTheFlu a skeleton crew, already beaten up from a previous battle and barely running under an automated system]] the fight would have been over right then.
72** In ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', features a new threat: a Klingon Bird-of-Prey that can fire while cloaked. No ship had been capable of doing this before now, making its existence both a shock and threat due to the obvious advantage. The ''Enterprise'' rigs a torpedo to follow a Klingon Bird-of-Prey's exhaust trail, seeking it out despite its being cloaked. In the novelization at least, this is explained as that particular ship's schtick (firing while cloaked) requiring a massive power plant, which exceeded the cloak's ability to hide/contain the exhaust.
73*** The ExpandedUniverse says that this exchange is an example of the constant arms race between cloaks and sensors: the Klingons develop a ship that can fire while cloaked, and once the Federation finds out about it, within a week they've invented a way to detect it.
74** ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'' features a more unusual use of the cloak. Lursa and B'etor are using an older Bird-of-Prey with a unique weakness. Riker gets the idea to exploit it to ''force'' the ship to cloak. It may or may not have still been able to fire, but its shields were now down. [[spoiler:Aware of its exact location (it hadn't moved from where it was when it was visible), they target its primary reactor and destroy it with one shot]].
75** In ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' the Reman ''Scimitar'' defies all previous perceptions of cloaking devices. It is undetectable by all current anti-cloak scanning methods, can fire at the Enterprise and retain its shields while cloaked, and it would never be quite clear to an attacker what if any effect the hits were having. While the sheer volume of fire it puts out does give the Enterprise-E enough targeting data to hit it semi-consistently, its shields allow it to tank the hits. It is said the Scimitar is one-of-a-kind [[SuperPrototype if not experimental]], with redundant energy systems and overpacked with weaponry (along with a DoomsdayDevice delivering system), making it a LightningBruiser that outclasses the Enterprise at least three-fold. But its sheer [[AwesomeButImpractical extravagance]] would explain why an entire fleet of them isn't made. Beta canon has other ''Scimitar''-class ships, but they're scaled down and aren't nearly as powerful as the original. They no longer have that advanced cloak or the superweapon.
76* ''Franchise/StarWars:''
77** ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'': [[AllThereInTheManual According to supplementary materials]], Darth Maul's ship the ''Scimitar'' has an incredibly advanced stealth device, allowing it to get around undetected in the skies of the galactic capital. It only gets explicitely used in the ExpandedUniverse.
78** ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'': Alluded to. The Imperial fleet is puzzled by the disappearance of the ''Millennium Falcon'' because it's apparently too small to carry a cloaking device. In reality, it's HiddenInPlainSight, attached to the back of a Star Destroyer's command tower.
79** ''Film/TheLastJedi'': The Resistance possesses a number of small, unarmed transports with cloaking technology. When the Resistance flagship is pursued by the First Order, Leia and Holdo come up with a plan to covertly evacuate their forces in these transports and hide out on the nearby planet Crait. [[spoiler:However, once DJ reveals the plan to the First Order, they're easily able to scan for the transports and target them.]]
80* In ''Film/WingCommander'', the preferred method of stealth typically involved staying close to other objects (asteroids, bigger ships, etc.) in hopes that it would prevent the enemy sensors from getting a clean look at them. At one point in the movie, an entire fleet hides by staying in low orbit over a planet. The effectiveness of the strategy typically depended on how close the enemy got. There is also an appearance of a 'Skipper' missile, which is a cloaked anti-capital ship warhead. It gets the name from the fact that its targeting systems can't function while the cloak is on, so it periodically skips into visibility to relocate its target and make course corrections.
81[[/folder]]
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83[[folder:Literature]]
84* Creator/AlastairReynolds' ''Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries'' has a model of computer that cools down when it computes, explicitly in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. It gets used by spaceships to stay at background-radiation temperature, and is the way most of the InvisibleAliens stay invisible. Since entropy and computation are both information-theoretic-ish things, this almost makes sense if you [[MST3KMantra don't think about it too hard]]. Early versions can break/overload though, performing calculations so fast that the entire ship begins to drop down to absolute zero; including the life support systems and cabins.
85** ...a computer that cools as it computes? [[{{Pun}} That is, LITERALLY]], FridgeLogic.
86** Before the magical cooling computers are perfected, there's a scene that almost perfectly delineates the extent to which stealth in space is possible. The protagonist is in a small, maneuverable ship. Its thrust is a reasonably-tightly-collimated photon beam, which therefore can't be observed unless you're almost directly aft of the ship. He's being pursued into a solar system rather than out, making it more difficult to notice the heat from his life-support systems. The system has a number of other ships, and his pursuers don't have governmental control over the system so they can't necessarily track them all. All of this means that he can stay hidden for roughly a day, after which his only recourse is to blow up the ship, fake his own death, and trust that someone will come pick him up; even that isn't really good enough as his pursuers can eventually analyze the wreckage for traces of human particles, but it buys him enough time to get to a major enough population center that he can disappear for real.
87* 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 [[StarfishAliens are unable to understand the concept of traffic laws]].
88** It's also played straight in the ''[[Literature/ChanurNovels Chanur Saga]]'', where the main character's starship went quiet while floating through an AsteroidThicket in order to hide from kifish hunterts, and spy ships can sit invisible at the edge of a star system while gathering information on passive scanners.
89** Also uses the "just plain disguise" option -- the Mahendo'sat at the very least are known to use military vessels pretending to be just plain freighters complete with easily detachable cargo modules et al., Q-ship style.
90* ''Franchise/StarWars'' examples:
91** ''Literature/{{Tarkin}}'' features the ''Carrion Spike'', Tarkin's personal ship. Designed by [[MadScientist Raith Sienar]] starting from the stealth ship he designed for the Republic during the Clone Wars, has a much improved cloak that, when active, makes it impossible to detect. When the ship is stolen Tarkin only manages to track it because it was temporarily carrying one of Darth Vader's meditation chambers, that the Sith could sense through the Force.
92** ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' 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.
93*** 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 ...
94*** 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.
95*** The [[Literature/HandOfThrawn sequel duology]] starts with Supreme Commander Pellaeon testing a computer that's designed to read enemy movements and predict what they'll do next, the idea being that the computer would get hooked up to the turbolasers and they could finally get some use out of cloaking. Unfortunately, though not at all to his surprise, the Predictor isn't as good as advertised, though later he is able to use it to determine something about another set of attackers.
96*** Later in the duology a trio of cloaked Star Destroyers lash onto a comet and ride it to be in position near Bothawui, planning to wait until both sides of the conflict had [[DivideAndConquer weakened each other]] so they would be easy pickings. Sensor probes are periodically sent just barely outside the cloaking radius to determine whether it's time to attack. It's mentioned that the isolation and lack of outside light or input is driving the crew a little bit crazy. The debris and emissions discouraged anyone from taking a close look. They still ended up being spotted, though admittedly that was a fluke.
97*** 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, such as planetary deep freeze and a complete biological holocaust.
98*** 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.
99*** "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).
100*** It probably had more to do with G0-T0's mass robot controller. Considering how robots are essentially just a different type of computer system, it was most likely something along the lines of "I will control your ships' computers so that they don't report that they detect me, and I will camouflage myself so that you don't see me with your own eyes." When [[spoiler:The Exile destroys the robot controller, the hold on the other ships were relinquished and the camo failed, so both the computers and the humans could 'see' the ship and thus destroy it.]]
101*** 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.
102*** That particular trick required the coordination only a Jedi Master (read: C'baoth) could provide; the impeccable split-second timing necessary to pull it off could not have been achieved otherwise. Also, once the New Republic finally got some data from the battle, the visual data showed a significant gap between the shield and the laser blasts "reappearing". The general delivering the briefing speculated that the cloaked ships were probably light cruisers, which would have naturally had capital-ship turbolasers like on Star Destroyers, albeit fewer of them. Thrawn also carefully chose his target planets for this trick, to make sure they'd surrender quickly enough that nobody would have time to make a closer examination of the sensor data.
103*** 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]].
104*** One of the Imperial officers notes that it should be impossible for them to have just disappeared, as "no ship that small has a cloaking device". While not technically true as later ExpandedUniverse and ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' material would show, cloaking field generators that ''could'' be mounted on a Millennium Falcon-sized ship were extremely rare and highly classified. And most of the AppliedPhlebotinum needed to power such small cloaking devices had already been used up.
105*** 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}}:
106--->'''Jaina's Astromech''': "A STEALTHX EMITTING COMM WAVES IS NO LONGER A STEALTHX. IT IS JUST A POORLY ARMED, LIGHTLY ARMORED X-WING SAYING COME GET ME."
107*** 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 sensors, thus avoiding the "flying blind" problem noted above for craft attempting to be stealthy by not using active sensors.
108* ''Literature/PerryRhodan'': just to be confusing, its cloaking devices are known as 'deflector fields'. Frakking Germans.
109** Specifically, deflector fields mostly just warp visible light to provide {{invisibility|Cloak}}. Their inability to handle other wavelengths in the EM spectrum has been used as a plot point in the past, and they're generally useless against advanced sensors -- in fact, the field's emissions can be detected in turn. That said, starship stealth in that universe still seems to be mostly a matter of shutting down any systems that generate 'noise' and hoping the ship itself doesn't get pinged by an active scan.
110** Just change infrared with Hyperenergy radiation. Most space faring civilization in the perryverse can detect five dimensional wavelength.
111** Another method for ships to cloak is to [[JustOneSecondOutOfSync send them 5 seconds into the future. You cannot detect something that is not here yet.]] It even works with whole planets, as done with earth itself.
112*** The tsunami division uses this concept but it needs two ships to be effective, the one hiding under the CTF field is blind.
113* Creator/ArthurCClarke
114** The ''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 are supposed to keep themselves hidden if gigajoules of energy were poured out from 154 spaceships at once. They, of course, then get detected.
115** Clarke also used another space-stealth rationale in his short [[http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html 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.
116* 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 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.
117** In a later installment Dame Honor confronts a hero-worshiping cadet attempting to praise her ingenuity for the aforementioned gambit by [[LampshadeHanging explaining]] just how stupid and desperate the tactic was. All Honorverse ships include numerous conventional sensors, radar, lidar, passive EM and IR detectors of all kinds; any one of which could have seen Honor coming from light-minutes away. Her trick worked simply because her enemy's sensor-techs were too lazy and trusting to check anything but their gravitic sensors, and apparently they had no automated monitoring systems.
118** Of course, the reason they use gravitic sensors is that gravity sensors are FTL as they work in the universe, and all other sensors are speed-of-light. Not to mention the distances involved are usually several AU, which is rather extreme to expect any other sensors to work in time to be useful in combat. She just closed close enough to fire on them before they noticed she existed, which resulted in their instant destruction because ships have to 'roll' to protect themselves or people can shoot straight down their unprotectable weak spot between their gravity wedges (which also means that Honor's ship was also completely unprotected, because she had them off).
119** Ships in the Honorverse also make extensive use of sensor jamming and decoys (more broadly known as Electronic Warfare). While this is the opposite of stealth in literal terms, it has most of the same effect -- it's obvious you're out there somewhere, but since space is big, if an enemy doesn't know exactly where you are, they can't hit you.
120** Averted in ''Mission of Honor'', where a small number of extremely stealthy ships using a unique drive system are deployed. One of them has a near miss with some unexpected enemy warships, during which the captain is praying that no one gets into a position to see his far side, from which all the heat is being dumped.
121** The Honorverse also uses the "disguise" variant, in the form of Q-ships; warships disguised as merchantmen.
122* Kimball Kinnison acquires a 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).
123** There's also constant reference to 'baffles' being used to reduce engine signature (and the consequences it has for a ship's performance and the time needed to get home).
124** Earlier in the series (at which time long-range FTL detection appears to work slightly differently), Virgil Samms has a SilentRunningMode spaceship built in which the atomic power plant can be shut down completely and enough power to run essential systems supplied by a diesel-powered generator. This both eliminates the radiated emissions by which other ships can detect it at long range, and reduces the background noise affecting the ship's own detectors so increasing its own maximum detection range by a good order of magnitude.
125* In the ''[[Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy Night's Dawn]]'' series, stealth can be achieved by dumping your heat away from the enemy and staying out of visual range. It won't work if the enemy has sensors on more than one side of you, so it's only used for tailing suspected smugglers.
126** Ships attempting stealth tracking of smugglers also get coated in a special foam which holds in any heat the ship might produce. Obviously, this means that most operations against smugglers have to be short-term missions, otherwise the crew would be cooked inside the ship.
127** ''Literature/TheNanoFlower'': A scientist in a TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture world is asked whether an alien could have made FirstContact with humanity yet. He responds that there's no possible way an alien vessel could have arrived in the solar system without being detected. As it turns out, the alien actually evolved within the solar system.
128* The Imperium's attempts at stealth in space for the TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} universe is touched on in the novel ''Cain's Last Stand''. Lacking the technosorcery of the Tau or Necrons, the Imperium uses Q-ships, merchantmen or barges (the novel uses an ore barge) refitted to performance levels of military-grade craft of a similar class. Given that an ore barge is the size of a light cruiser...
129* ''Literature/BrokenAngels'' by Creator/RichardKMorgan. A UN force fighting a planetary war puts its most important assets on space platforms in far-flung elliptical orbits so the enemy can't find them. Space, as the protagonist points out, is very big.
130* In ''Literature/SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish'', Ford Prefect refers to the possibility of "clos[ing] down all external signalling and radiation from the ship, to render it as nearly invisible as possible unless you were actually looking at it". This is an ''empty'' ship, so he really could shut ''everything'' down without worrying about life-support or steering. And then consider the possibilities of the Somebody Else's Problem field (basically a weaponized WeirdnessCensor), which could fool the perceptions of the people operating the sensors (and maybe even automates if Douglas Adams' usual sentient robot theory applies).
131* ''Tomorrow War'' has "X-Cruisers", essentially space submarines. Instead of passing through X-matrix into normal space again they can "hang" on the border, so they aren't here for locators, but close enough to sniff out ships with mass-detectors. The good news is that they drop out of this state slowly enough to prevent micro-{{telefrag}}s through the whole volume which plague normal jumps, up to popping up in the atmosphere, but can emerge, fire and "dive" back fast enough to prevent a strong retaliation. The bad news is that this mode continuously wastes FTL fuel, about the most expensive matter known. Also, they can't move fast there and even if they re-emerge, they aren't going to accelerate well, because engines that keep the ship a proper 3D object where it shouldn't be take up to 9/10 of the ship's volume, so the normal equipment, even propulsion and defense, is severely limited.
132* Creator/PeterFHamilton
133** 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. However he does point out if they have arrived undetected, finding them in the solar system would only be possible with an electromagnetic sweep for any power leakage from the spaceship's onboard systems, but it would take five years and two billion pounds to build a system capable of doing so.
134** 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 softer than the ''Commonwealth Saga'', where there is almost no stealth.
135* In ''Literature/{{Anathem}}'' there is a rare hard science fiction example without hyperspace or phlebotinum. It requires doing all the assembly on the other side of a planet from the ship they are sneaking up on. Then orbiting around hidden behind the 'cold black mirror' and hoping that the ship doesn't notice the reflection of other stars. It also involves decoys to simulate a catastrophic mission failure so they believe that those sneaking up on them are dead.
136* The [[spoiler:aliens]] in [[Creator/JohnHemry Jack Campbell]]'s hard-sf ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' have superb stealth capabilities: their ships can become completely undetectable at will, and even if they're visible, no one can get a detailed look at them. This is because [[spoiler:they've hacked into the humans' sensors, which then only show the humans what the aliens ''want'' humans to see]].
137** The reason the Syndics haven't figured it out in over 100 years is because [[spoiler:they didn't, originally, have the technology to detect these quantum probability worms in their ships' systems]]. Later, even when it becomes possible, they were already on the wrong track and didn't think to go back to the beginning.
138** Later on, the [[spoiler:Dark Ships]] don't show up on Alliance sensors because [[spoiler:Alliance fleet HQ has sent a patch to all ship's sensors to automatically filter out Dark Ships]].
139* In Creator/JohnHemry's Literature/PaulSinclair novel ''A Just Determination'', there is a great deal on the devices used to keep ships more or less invisible in space. Both messages and changing course are avoided for the chances they offer for detection.
140* In the first book of the Franchise/StarTrek trilogy ''Literature/TerokNor'', two Cardassian warships conceal themselves in the magnetosphere of a moon, escaping detection by the Bajoran and Tzenkethi ships they intend to hijack or destroy.
141* ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' books have [[StarfishAliens Logrians]] designing massive gravity-bending generators around a large star cluster in order to hide the entire cluster from any detection, even visual, by bending all emissions in a never-ending loop around the sphere of generators. From the inside, the outside was also not visible for the same reason. The goal was to keep three races alive during a migration of animal-like {{Planet Eater}}s. It's impossible to travel into the cluster using hyperdrives (which the aliens didn't have anyway) due to the gravity interference), and no one knew about the cluster's existence until it was discovered by a group of explorers on an STL mining ship, which was still damaged by all that energy running in the loop (making it an impromptu forcefield). Millions of years later, humans find the generators (and the degraded descendants of the three races) and reverse-engineer them to put on {{Space Fighter}}s, although managing all emissions and reflecting active scanning beams still requires constant monitoring and adjusting by an expert [[TheCracker cybreaker]]. In fact, even then the fighter is detectable as an object with mass. The goal is to make it look like an ordinary piece of debris or an asteroid. The technology isn't used much due to these limitations.
142* Creator/GlenCook's ''Passage at Arms'' (heavily inspired by ''Film/DasBoot'' by Lothar-Günther Buchheim) describes a single mission of an invisible ship. In the backstory humans have discovered during battles that overloading FTL engines sent ships to [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace somewhere weird]], [[SubspaceOrHyperspace radically different from relativistic space and known hyperspace]]. This led to creation of "climbers" -- medium-sized starships, that can hide in this newly-discovered "climbing space" leaving only a "pseudo-Hawking black hole" several millimeters wide. The only way to detect the climber is to notice disappearing stars. The major problem is heat buildup, since the ship cannot dump heat while hidden. Hitting "pseudo-Hawking" with nuclear weapons is considered wasteful, because most of the energy misses the target; microwave emitters, on the other hand, are much cheaper and prolonged, therefore do more damage over time. Another enemy tactic was putting the ship engine over "pseudo-Hawking", but humans learned that quick maneuvering inside an engine can destroy the enemy ship.
143* In ''Literature/ArkRoyal'' the aliens have advanced stealth systems that allow their fighters to slip right past the human fleet's fighters in their first battle and dice the carriers to pieces. Fortunately it's not complete stealth and a hard enough scan can detect them, and it seems to interfere with their targeting so they have to drop it before attacking.
144* Played realistically ''and'' straight in Creator/JohnVarley's ''Literature/RedThunder''. In the near future, a group of regular joes have figured out a basically magical space drive, and build a single-stage Earth-to-Mars ship out of the drive and off-the-shelf parts. Partway through their mission, they have to go rescue the Chinese Mars mission, and the only detectors they have on board are radar devices designed for ''ocean-going ships.'' Given that their range is measured in double-digits, it's useless for finding something thousands of miles/kilometers away. Their only long-range detectors are optical telescopes. The sequel briefly touches on how the zero-emission mirrored bubbles of the space drive make for great stealth, except that no time is passing for the people inside, and the only way to turn off the bubble is from outside...
145* Played semi-realistically in ''Literature/TheNamelessWar'', as it can only be achieved by shutting down and drifting. The Flak Cruiser Deimos hides inside a planetary ring formation, but her captain, Ronan Crowe is aware that once the ship's heat sink is saturated then even inside the rings his ship will be detected.
146* In the ''Literature/HorusHeresy'' novel ''Deliverance Lost'', the Raven Guard ship carrying the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre slowly crawls its way out of the Isstvan system under minimal power, hoping to obscure its EM signature against the background radiation of the system.
147* ''Literature/TheQuantumThief'' features Metacloaks used to hide objects in outer space. It's implied that they only work in 180-degree radius, directed at the target their users wish to hide from, and consume immense amounts of energy. Still, it's rather impressive that they apparently even hide the gravitational effects of planet-sized Gubernyas that collapse unstable miniature black holes as their method of propulsion until they're right on top of the enemy, astronomically speaking.
148* In ''Literature/TheExpanse'', it is ''possible'' for ships to hide, but they can only do so by shutting off most of their systems and hiding behind asteroids, or by taking innocuous orbits and paths and hoping that anyone looking for them won't be able to pick them out from thousands of other ships moving around the vast, empty void. There's also the dedicated Martian stealth ships, which among other things are designed to hide their emissions and have a radiation-absorbing hull coating that makes them impossible to detect unless they activate their engines. This radiation-absorbent coating becomes very important later on, as it ends up being used by a group of terrorists to [[spoiler: sneak several asteroids past Earth's fleets to impact the planet and cause immense destruction]].
149* ''[[Literature/FortunesOfWar Dreadnought!]]'' revolves around a prototype dreadnought-class warship which, in addition to its considerable firepower, has an experimental projector array that can transmit false images of the ship into other ships' sensors, essentially making it impossible to accurately detect without, theoretically, people standing at the windows and relaying information to the bridge. It uses this ability to confound some Klingon cruisers, letting them waste a lot of photon torpedoes and disruptor blasts (and, incidentally, fooling ''Enterprise'' into thinking it was getting shot to pieces) before dropping the illusion, moving in from where it had been projecting, and obliterating the Klingons.
150* 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.
151* In the ''Literature/{{Aristillus}}'' series, the giant antigravity ships made from modified cargo freighters are able to sneak between earth and the moon thanks to a 'stealth coating' that absorbs radar. At many points during the story, large objects sneak up on the lunar surface catching people unawares until the last second.
152* In ''Literature/HeavensRiver'', Bob designs probes that can coast through a system and remain largely undetected due to their small profile and efficient heat sinks. Since he's building them while hiding in the system's Oort cloud, he has a bright idea to put some of that ice floating out there with the temperature of a few Kelvin inside the probes and have all the heat dumped there. Eventually, the temp will rise enough to be detectable, but it'll take a long time. At the same time, the probes will be able to take active scans using their [=SUDDARs=], since the aliens inhabiting the system haven't discovered subspace and wouldn't pick up the scans.
153* ''Literature/LaszloHadronAndTheWargodsTomb'' features the starship Wyvern, a military prototype equipped with a suite of devices ranging from light-bending fields to render the ship physically invisible to hacking software to spoof other ships' sensors. The ship was also modified from a civilian freighter to make it look unsuspicious and unassuming when visible.
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156[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
157* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has [[InvisibilityCloak cloaking devices]], mostly used by the Romulans and Klingons. They can be detected by someone who suspects they're there and has good enough sensors, though. These cloaks have limitations, like the extreme power consumption and the inability to do certain things while cloaked, like go at high warp without being detected, raise shields, or fire weapons. Some vessels over the franchise are exceptions, mostly in the movies. The Federation meanwhile was banned from having any shields with a cloak due to a treaty with the Romulans. ''Series/DeepSpaceNine'' introduced the ''Defiant'', which ''was'' allowed a cloaking device, but like other ships could not raise shields or fire weapons while cloaked.
158** The original example, from the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E14BalanceOfTerror Balance of Terror]]", was essentially so the show could do a wartime submarine drama [[JustForFun/RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]], with the cloak substituting for submersion. The source movie is ''Film/TheEnemyBelow'' and during the initial contact the dialogue between the ships captain and the sonar man is almost identical to the spaceship allegory, including the initial bearing of the shadowy contact, and the ship's course change to determine whether the contact is genuine or a sensor malfunction.
159** "Balance of Terror" implicitly touches upon the "he can't see you, you can't see him" problem: the ''Enterprise'' detects the cloaked ship as a small blip, easily mistaken as a minor sensor malfunction. When you see what is going on in the Romulan ship, it quickly becomes apparent that the exact same applies to them detecting the ''Enterprise''.
160** One of the cheats in the 25th Anniversary Computer game was [[spoiler:if you ran up against a Romulan who then used their cloaking device, the game superimposed a "travelling matte" over the ship. Turn your contrast up on your monitor and you could see the black splotch that was supposed to hide the ship.]]
161** In ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', the Suliban have a different cloaking technology which seems to be particle/radiation-based, as when Trip is trying to reverse engineer one, he ends up accidentally triggering it and rendering his hand temporarily invisible.
162** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
163*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E20TheEmissary The Emissary]]", an old Klingon warship awakens and cloaks to attack. However, as a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, in the 70 years since the warship was constructed, the Federation's sensors have advanced so they can detect the old warship with ease.
164*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E21PeakPerformance Peak Performance]]", the Enterprise is engaged in war games with the far inferior Starfleet ship USS ''Hathaway''. During the simulated engagement, the ''Hathaway'' gains the upper hand when Worf hacks into the ''Enterprise's'' sensors to distract the ''Enterprise''.
165*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E7Unification1 Unification, Part 1]]", 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, 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.
166*** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E13FaceOfTheEnemy Face of the Enemy]]" has Troi spend time undercover on a Romulan D'deridex class warbird and is informed by another agent that their cloaking device relies on all systems within the ship to be carefully calibrated to work together otherwise various energy spikes will make them easily visible to conventional sensors. Since the calibration threshold is so small, they were able to knock some systems out of alignment just enough so the crew on board don't know what is going on but the Enterprise crew is confused by random readings appearing with no source.
167*** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E11ThePegasus The Pegasus]]" reveals an explanation for why Starfleet ships don't have cloaking devices, the Treaty of Algernon with the Romulans in the early 2400's prevented The Federation from using cloaking devices or experimenting with the technology, which many felt was a gross strategic weakness. Much later in the timeline (and other timelines) reveal that when the Romulan Empire collapsed the Treaty became void and Starfleet ships started using cloaks like other races. [[WatsonianVsDoylist The Doylist]] explanation for that limitation was that for ''TNG'' Creator/GeneRoddenberry felt that Starfleet were explorers and scientists, he didn't like the idea of them sneaking around.
168** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'':
169*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS1E10StateOfFlux State of Flux]]", a traitor tells the Kazon how to mask their spacecraft from Voyager's sensors, but Tom Paris happens to see something there using his Mark One Eyeball.
170*** "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E13Prophecy Prophecy]]" opens with ''Voyager'' under attack from a ''D7''-class Klingon battlecruiser, a TOS-era relic. Naturally, they're able to quickly defeat the cloak and cripple the enemy.
171*** Occasionally, someone will attempt to "hide" their ship over a planet's magnetic pole. Some types of sensors appear to become slightly confused by the power discharges common in such places.
172** In ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'', the Klingons have figured out a way to attack the enemy despite not being able to fire while cloaked. They build giant cleave ships that ram the enemy while cloaked. The cloak is eventually dropped, but it's typically far too late for the enemy ship. It doesn't turn out too well for them the first time, as the ship being rammed engages self-destruct, which wipes out the cleave ship as well. The second time is much more successful. At the same time, that particular cloak has already been overcome thanks to the titular ship working out a sensor algorithm to scan for cloaks.
173*** Also, Section 31 ships of the NCIA-93 type are able to disguise themselves as asteroids.
174** In ''Series/StarTrekPicard'', a Romulan modifies his ship's cloaking device to project a false image of the ship ahead of his target, while remaining hidden behind them. This allows him to surprise them when they assume to have dealt a serious blow to the false image.
175* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' frequently references ships flying on a "Stealth Vector", presumably flying on the other side of planets and other large objects as often as possible. It rarely, if ever, works: hiding behind something only prevents things on the other side detecting you, and you can't see them either so you don't know if they changed course for some reason and are about to turn up where they can see you.
176* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica1978'': In "[[Recap/BattlestarGalactica1978TakeTheCelestra Take the Celestra]]", TheStarscream sends his captain off in a shuttle in the wrong direction to the fleet, 'goes dark' by shutting down the navigational beacons, scanners and running lights, then flies off using the thrusters so the shuttle can't find its way back. They do find their way back, and [[NiceJobFixingItVillain thanks to the scanners being turned off the mutinous crew don't know it]].
177* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' has the Blackbird, which use carbon composite plating to avoid DRADIS detection, and is painted black to reduce the sunlight deflected. Both it and Stealthstar (different craft) got destroyed pretty quickly, though. Largely because since it ''was'' a stealth craft, a Cylon Raider flew right into it.
178** In the miniseries Boomer escapes detection by the Cylons simply by [[SpaceFriction turning off her Raptor's engine]] until they reach Caprica. Of course, Raptors also have their own Electronic Countermeasures equipment.
179*** Possibly justified, in that the area they are flying through was recently the site of a LARGE battle, and there would be lots of ships and fragments of ships emitting all kinds of waste energy. Tough to tell one glowing piece of space junk from another.
180*** The Blackbird's actually not too bad, comparatively. It was only stealth when everything was shut down, so it had to coast on the scouting run it made.
181* ''Series/BabylonFive'' has a few examples:
182** The Minbari are the best known for this, with two variants:
183*** The first one is an advanced jamming technology that allows them to play havoc with enemy sensors, making it impossible for them to get effective lock-ons on their ships. Although this makes it easy to know that there are Minbari ''present'' in the area, this technology is treated as effective stealth since locating the exact positions of ships -- to say nothing about aiming weapons at them in a combat scenario -- is literally impossible without sensor data. This is compoundeded by their mastery of ArtificialGravity giving their ships enormous manouverability, making manual targeting difficult even when they're close enough to see.
184*** The other is an actual stealth technology, that makes the ship effectively invisible to sensors, as demonstrated when a Ranger fighter managed to sneak on a Centauri warship, ''breach its hull and siphon away atmosphere'' without being detected. The problem of a detectable exhaust is easily avoided by Minbari ships having fully gravitic drives that allow to move without firing thrusters (that they don't appear to have anyway).
185** The ExpandedUniverse give the Hyach a number of stealth ships, depending on advanced hull materials and a fully gravitic drive to not be detected. This has a few downsides: as their technology is not as advanced as the Minbari's, their stealth ships need to turn off their active sensors to not be detected, and WILL get detected anyway the moment they open fire; also, the stealth hull is more fragile than the standard, and a stealth ship is far easier to destroy when it gets detected.
186** Again from the ExpandedUniverse, the Rutarian strike fighter: developed by the Centauri, it uses an unspecified form of stealth to sneak upon unsuspecting targets before opening fire.
187** The Shadows have their own variant: thanks to their superior technology, they can easily detect ships in normal space while staying in hyperspace, allowing them to sneak on an unsuspecting target from hyperspace, phase in (as opposed to opening a jump point) and annihilate the victim with their superior firepower. As the Younger Races cannot detect ships in hyperspace from normal space, it's as effective as actual stealth.
188** Pretty much everyone can use the camouflage variant, producing merchant ships that are far more well armed than they have any right to be.
189* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'':
190** The difficulty of stealth in space is acknowledged in [[Recap/FireflyE01Serenity the pilot episode]] when the crew's attempt to avoid detection from the Alliance by hiding among the wreckage of a larger ship is foiled by the heat coming off their ship. They only get away by the use of a "cry-baby" -- a device rigged to send off the signal of a freighter full of passengers that needed help, which they knew (hoped) the Alliance would go help rather than them.
191** Also in the pilot was the necessity to turn off the ship's engines and power down the systems to avoid detection by a Reaver ship. Since one cannot really hide in space, the crew wanted to make it look like the ship was a derelict and not populated, which is definitely preferable to the FateWorseThanDeath that the Reavers would visit on them if they took the ship.
192** In a later episode, the crew does manage to sneak up on a space station by [[SpaceFriction flying toward it with their engines off]] and systems powered down, and pumping out electromagnetic interference to disguise the ship as a radar glitch. This wasn't a military station, so presumably did not have the full array of advanced sensors an Alliance warship would have.
193** The series favors misdirection over outright stealth. In TheMovie, ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' slips past Alliance ships twice in one go; the first time, they descend toward a planet, presumably losing themselves in the traffic above it, but the Alliance follows their "pulse beacon" and locks onto it with a missile.... only for Mal to reveal that he'd removed said pulse beacon and was carrying it with him to keep the Alliance ship from launching a missile at ''Serenity.'' Later, as they escape the planet and slip out in the orbital traffic again, the Operative tries to track them via their navigation satellite's trajectory, as ''Serenity'' is a registered transport, only to discover ''seven'' different nav-sat trajectories belonging to ''Serenity'', six of them being decoys (the audience was treated to six barrels with blinking lights and thrusters being jettisoned from Serenity as it broke orbit).
194** Shows up again later, but in a not-so-obvious manner. The crew attempts to approach Miranda, but in order to get there, they have to pass through a Reaver fleet. Since they're disguised as Reavers, they can attempt to pass through. The not-so-obvious part comes from the fact that they ''can't'' go around the Reaver fleet; since there's no stealth in space, any attempt to go around the Reaver fleet would be spotted, and be taken as a surefire sign that they're trying to avoid the Reaver fleet.
195** When coming off of Miranda, they do the same thing... only once they're through, they ''shoot at'' the Reavers, eliciting the response they want: an all-out dash to Mr. Universe's planet. Said planet has a whole mess of EM interference, so much so that the Alliance fleet gathered to head ''Serenity'' off doesn't know it's being chased by Reavers until the first Reaver ship emerges.
196** The RPG states that it ''is'' possible to hide, but reliable heat-masking requires you to be hiding in the flame from someone else's engines. This requires two things: an insanely good pilot, and a degree of regard for one's personal safety that makes mere SuicidalOverconfidence look cowardly.
197** Shown in "[[Recap/FireflyE14ObjectsInSpace Objects in Space]]", in which Jubal Early ''is'' able to sneak up on ''Serenity'' by hiding in their heat wake. Wash notices something funny about the sensor readings, but he dismisses them, probably for that exact reason.
198** In an early episode, the Serenity crew ''stumble'' across a derelict spacecraft, not actually detecting it until it's nearly close enough to be seen out the window with the naked eye. While a derelict ''would'' be "cold" to thermal-infrared sensors, such an object would still reflect light from the local sun and would still show up on radar sweeps. Perhaps they knew ''something'' was there, but guessed that it was a small asteroid until they got close enough to see surface details.
199*** In that situation, though, it's because nobody on the ship was paying attention -- presumably, if Wash was in the pilot's seat instead of playing... [[{{Calvinball}} whatever game that was]], he'd have seen it sooner. The proximity alert which still notified them in plenty of time to avoid a collision.
200* The Franchise/StargateVerse has all kinds of cloak generators. For example, the Sodan personal cloak is said to shift the wearer out-of-phase with this reality. Some Goa'uld ships can also cloak themselves but they can't hide reentry heat. Asgard ships can mask their presence from just about everything except visual detection. The kings of this field were obviously the Tau'ri who figured out how to invert Ancient shields, exchanging protection for total undetectability. It's possible (even likely) that the Ancients had thought of this too, seeing as their own cloaking devices (on the "puddle jumpers") can likewise be converted into shields.
201** The ''Atlantis'' GrandFinale has a Wraith Superhive (an ordinary Hive-ship enhanced with a ZPM) easily cut through the cloak on a Puddle Jumper, although it may not be perfect, as they weren't able to actually ''hit'' the small craft with their guns (to be fair, those guns are meant for bigger fish, that's why they have Darts).
202* ''Series/BlakesSeven'':
203** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS1E4TimeSquad Time Squad]]", the Liberator approaches Saurian Major from Federation space, figuring their attention will be towards neutral space. So they don't have a space traffic control system?
204** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS1E8Duel Duel]]", the Liberator orbits close to a planet to hide them from long range detection, as [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale opposed to hiding in deep space]]. However, [[TheDragon Space Commander Travis]] has already tracked them down and uses the planet to hide his attack run. He's only detected because some of the crew have teleported down to the planet, where they look up at the night sky and [[OhCrap see the lights of the drive units closing in on the Liberator]].
205** In Season B, Avon invents a [[InvisibilityCloak deflector shield]] that can mask the Liberator from anything except a short-range scan. A couple of episodes later they're caught in a massive ambush [[LensmanArmsRace thanks to the Federation developing a similar device]], and [[AntiHero Avon expresses disappointment]] that he can't sell his invention to them.
206** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS3E3Volcano Volcano]]", the Liberator is in geostationary orbit so it can only scan one half of a planet at the time. Servalan has a battlefleet in the same orbit on the other side of the planet, until it's time to strike. It also helps that the man in charge of the planet's detection grid is in league with her.
207** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS4E4Stardrive Stardrive]]", Avon decides to sneak past the detection grid of a planet by hugging close to an asteroid. SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome and the ''Scorpio'' side-swipes the asteroid, severely damaging the ship.
208[[/folder]]
209
210[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
211* In ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' TabletopRPG, it is impossible to hide a ship. There's always a blip. That blip, however, might be a bathtub with engines or a fleet of warships. [[AppliedPhlebotinum Electronic masking]] can make ships stealthy, and the rules address the thruster issue. The trope kicks in however with sensors, stolen wholly from the [[SpaceIsAnOcean submarine warfare]] playbook.
212** 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. It also means that the ship cannot maneuver, has no sensor capability, and cannot communicate with other ships. So, all it can do is coast along until it thinks it's where it should be, and then drop the black globe. The black globe has a limited amount of energy that it can store, and exceeding that amount destroys the ship.
213* ''TabletopGame/TwentyThreeHundredAD'' (by the same authors as Traveller) plays it similarly. Starship combat is built around the idea that you can always tell that something is there, but not necessarily exactly what it is, and until you can detect exactly what it is, you have no way of creating a decent targeting solution against something that is basically teleporting hundreds of times per second. In this setting, 'stealth' is ways to hide your energy signatures to make it harder to tell exactly what you are, and avoiding use of your active sensors. The result is what the author terms "Hide-and-Seek With Bazookas".
214* Eldar ships in ''TabletopGame/BattlefleetGothic'' use a variant of this called a holofield. Rather than try to completely hide the ship, it makes it almost impossible to pinpoint. You know it's there, but only its general area. The most effective method of attack is straight up [[MoreDakka saturation bombing]].
215** The other fun thing about the Eldar is that they use solar sails for propulsion. This effectively eliminates the problem of detection by exhaust.
216*** And replaces it with the problem of being a big, glittery mirror.
217** And Necron ships are stealthy, due to being crewed by cold metallic creatures, and having inertialess drives.
218*** Not to mention being made of a material that is able to instantly react to outside effects to absorb / deflect them, which may include sensor sweeps. On the other hand since Necron technology remains very obscure, it's possible that their vessels are radiating all sorts of exotic particles that no one can detect (or knows to look for).
219** Completely averted by orks: the last thing they want is for their enemies to ''not'' see them coming (as this would be a downright ''sneaky'' thing to do, and only gits and weaklings are sneaky), so their ships are deliberately as large, loud, and flashy as possible. The closest thing they have is that one of their main forms of transport involves finding asteroids, fitting them with engines and weapons and living quarters and making them more or less airtight, and firing off in the general direction of an inhabited planet, yelling WAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH! all the way.
220*** Though again, Orks being Orks, this is not so much the Orks being stealthy, but rather accidental stealth thanks to the hubris of their enemies. The Imperium of Man's Navy - which, while using advanced technology, barely understands said technology anymore, with a religious faction dedicated to keeping them in some semblance of working order and interpreting them - would simply see an asteroid heading for a planet on long range sensors/telescopes, and send out a Defense Monitor ship to go out and hit it with its guns to divert its course. It's not until they see the thing is sporting thrusters and weaponry and a transmission with said shouts of "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!" that they realize what's really going on, much too late to stop it. To the Orks, a "Rok" is just an incredibly efficient (by Ork standards no less) and properly Ork way of launching the planet fall by combining orbital bombardment, troop/equipment lander, and a "Beachhead" operating base all in one.
221*** And let's not forget the Blood Axes: a clan of orks who completely understand logistics, strategy, pinpoint strikes, evasion and when to use them. When these guys are calling the shots, they are terrifyingly good at taking anyone by surprise (explicitly taking advantage of the unsubtleness of other clans, like the Goffs, to keep their enemies from thinking orks are capable of sneaking or even being quiet). The most notable lore example involved a Tau supership called the Korst'la, which could obliterate anything the local Waagh! could throw at it. The solution? Some Blood Axe Kommandos realized there was only one spacedock big enough to rearm and refuel that ship, and used a captured Tau transport to deceive their way in, at which point [[CurbStompBattle things went about]] [[StuffBlowingUp as one would expect]] and the spacedock was destroyed. With the Korst'la unable to dock anywhere, it eventually ran out of ammo and the ork Waagh went on uninterrupted. That's right; ORKS decieved TAU.
222** Tyranid hive ships can also be quite stealthy, due to not using engines, instead psychically manipulating the gravity well of their last meal's sun to catapult them towards the next one, though they can use gas jets and/or bioplasma-based maneuvering thrusters for course corrections. Tyranids can also survive being frozen solid, which has led particularly canny hive fleets to freeze vanguard craft using cryogenic gasses before catapulting them, making them invisible to thermal scans until they get close enough to a sun to thaw out, by which point it's already too late.
223*** Tyranids also cause a "shadow" in the warp which essentially cuts off psykers from the warp. You know there's a big tyranid fleet coming, but you can't tell which system it's actually heading for. And you can't call for help.
224** The Tau take a much more realistic approach, using electronic warfare and other high tech devices to help screen their ships.
225** Ships dedicated to Chaos have the advantage that, thanks to being worshipers of the demonic gods of the Warp (a literally Hell Space and the most common form of FTL travel), flying through Warp Space is ''slightly'' safer and more predictable for them. Many a Chaos Traitor Fleet invasion is only first announced as a Warp Storm that appears out of nowhere, cuts off a planet or sector of space, and expels the fleet out into real space to begin its invasion.
226* Explicitly averted in Ad Astra Games' ''Attack Vector: Tactical'', the first chapter of the rulebook of which is available [[http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/AVT_Tutorial.pdf here]]. Ships are visible long before they reach effective guns range. In other Ad Astra titles, stealth in space is allowed, in large part because they're not aiming for as much of a hard-science feel.
227* Really hiding a starship in ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' is essentially impossible without [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien superscience]], instead you have to rely on being so far away that sensor locks are nearly impossible. While some degree of stealth is possible, the heat generated by engines is a serious problem. Closer in, electronic counter measures can prevent a ship that has been spotted from being easily hit.
228* Redmond Simonsen's ''Battlefleet Mars'' gave us [[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html#misc this]] little gem:
229--> So which one is you, Joey, and which are the aluminum balloons? ('''Seven''' dots grew on the screen, all had slightly different vectors.) Now you know [[EnergyWeapon my heater can take you in one flash]] and you also know that one zap is all I'm going to get. And if I take it you've got a perfect excuse to blow me up for the honor of the company rather than recapture valuable property for the accountants. So what's it going to be? I think you shot off too many balloons too early Joey -- cause the other ones aren't making the course correction you just did. Ain't that you, Joe?
230--> [[UnusualUserInterface Ulans squinted and tapped his foot.]] (firing guns)
231* ''TabletopGame/StarFleetBattles''. Being based on Franchise/StarTrek, of course Romulan vessels have cloaking devices that make them invisible. However, to give opponents of the Romulans a chance, the game designers made some changes. It takes a while for the device to turn on and off ("fade out" and "fade in" periods), and explosive detonations reveal a nearby cloaked ship's position (the "flash cube" effect).
232* ''TabletopGame/StarRealms'' has the Stealth Needle. Instead of becoming invisible, it just mimics the characteristics of another ship. It's also a example of the Machine Cult's high tech, in a setting where stealth spaceships are almost nonexistent.
233* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' has stealth armor for Aerospace Fighters, but when used outside of a planet's atmosphere it's only effective in rounds that the fighter doesn't use its engines, the fusion torch it uses for thrust gives off so much IR emissions that it completely negates the stealth armor's effects.
234** Some in-universe material speaks of recon aerospace fighters that accelerated and set course out of range of enemy sensors, then cut their engines and did a ballistic coast over the enemey's position. It's noted that they only got a small amount of data from their fast passover, but they weren't spotted.
235* In ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones'' Spyglass-built ships have a bonus to evade detection by sensors, though it's not perfect. The espionage MegaCorp likes to insinuate they've discovered some secret hull coating or heat dampers [[spoiler: but they actually installed backdoors in everyone else's sensors.]]
236* In ''TabletopGame/CthulhuTech'', apparently, it's ''easier'' to hide things in space because you can vent excess heat into space. (For those playing along at home, [[ArtisticLicensePhysics that's actually sort of the exact opposite of how it works.]])
237[[/folder]]
238
239[[folder:Video Games]]
240* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' has cloaked ships, and the second game has distortion probes. Cloaked ships can only be spotted via proximity sensors unless they reveal their position by opening fire.
241** The Kadeshi used a rather clever form of stealth: instead of modifying their ships, they set up camp in a nebula where the massive amounts of gas and energy obscured their ships from sensors. By the time the victims got a visual on the [[OhCrap dozens of Swarmers]] bearing down on them, it was already too late.
242** The non-sequel ''Cataclysm'' has Mimic-class Infiltration Craft using holo-projection technology reverse-engineered from [[SpacePirates Turanic Raider]] ships that attacked them earlier. This allows the Mimic to pass for an enemy fighter or a small asteroid. Special sensor scans ''can'' detect them, but as long as the mimic behaves like the ship/object it is projecting a hologram of, it's unlikely. Intended only as a way to scout enemy positions and send back intelligence, Mimics don't have offensive weaponry, but are capable of ramming enemy ships in a suicide attack if discovered. Two Mimics are capable of combining into a Martyr-class Mimic Composite Vehicle, basically a corvette-sized version of the same but capable of mimicking a larger craft or an asteroid. The Leech-class Breaching Pod is an unmanned drone that passes ordinary detection by being really tiny and can only be detected by specialized sensor arrays. It attaches to an enemy ship and slowly melts its hull, given enough time and an inattentive player, a single Leech can destroy a heavy cruiser.
243* ''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. A so-equipped ship often has an oversized mass effect drive core as well; normally used for counter-gravity and FTL propulsion, the aptly-named "Tantalus" drive core alternate design is used to create gravity wells that the ship "falls" into, thus propelling it without the need to vent thrust exhaust with conventional reaction drives. 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.
244* The same aversion can be seen in ''I-War 2: Edge of Chaos'' video game. There are special "stealthy" precooled internal heatsinks used to reduce the ship's IR profile, making it more difficult to detect. You can also reduce your ship's visibility by switching off non-essential systems.
245* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' has cloaking that renders units invisible to the naked eye and to non-specialized sensors. The Terran Wraith and Ghost can cloak temporarily, while the Protoss Observer and Dark Templar are permanently cloaked (they can cloak indefinitely, so they don't bother to put an off-switch into the game). The Protoss Arbiter can cloak other units, but not itself; this tends to strain WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief - who the heck would make a unit that can't cloak itself? Yeah, yeah, gameplay mechanics, we know - but still (supposedly, it involves creating a reality-warping field that requires itself to remain anchored in reality to generate it). Weirder still, one Arbiter cannot cloak another one. Also, almost all Zerg ground units can burrow underground (even if that ground is the hull of a space station), which has the effect of immobile cloaking. The Protoss explain cloaking with psionics and reality warping. The specifics of Wraith and Ghost cloaking are never fully explained (PsychicPowers for the latter). The one staple is that all of these are easily overthrown if sensors are put into play.
246** The sequel offers an explanation on the Zerg. Part of their uber-evolution included an ability to vibrate their bodies at incredibly high-speeds, allowing them to quickly dig through any surface. While this would work for loose terrains, it doesn't explain hiding their burrows when digging into rock or structures.
247*** Probably because they could hide under loose rocks or plating (or rip it up and hide), but making that animation that's only for very specific tilesets would likely be a waste of time and processing power.
248** In the [[VideoGame/StarCraftII sequel]], the averting of blindness is (somewhat) justified in Terran units: when they cloak, a visor descends over their eyes, implying they would only see darkness without it. Said sequel also adds the Banshee and Specter (basically the same as the Ghost) as Terran units that can cloak, and the Mothership for the Protoss which again can cloak friendly units (and ''buildings'') but not itself.
249* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'''s Mirage Tank. It can cloak itself with trees and other inanimate objects with its ''Personal Gap Generator''. It can also cloak other units with its ''Gap Generator'', using all of its power. This means it cannot use his main weapon for attacking or conceal itself while in this state.
250* The ''Cloaking Field'' support power from ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars''
251* ''VideoGame/WingCommander 2'''s plot was based around the PlayerCharacter being demoted for falling asleep on the job, letting his carrier get blown up, and inventing a lie about the Kilrathi having cloaking devices to cover his negligence. Only one other character believes the truth. Of course, halfway through the game stealthed fighters are all over the place wrecking Earth's shit. You still don't get your old job back, though, thanks to a traitor destroying all the evidence.
252** The third game (and the film, covered above) introduce the Skipper Missile, a powerful, very annoying and thankfully rare anti-capital ship weapon. It travels under cloak, only becoming visible for a few seconds to check and correct its course before cloaking again, causing it to 'skip' in and out of sensor detection. This is actually a plausible way of using a cloaking device, given the assumption that the technical issues behind making one have been solved. However, given that the Kilrathi have been fielding Strakha stealth fighters for a game and a half now, and their sensors are clearly capable of allowing things to fly around without dropping out of cloak, the plausibility seems more like a lucky incidence of MinovskyPhysics.
253* ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'' has stealth ships, mostly used by Rhineland [[spoiler:and the Osiris -- the technology came from the Nomads]].
254** To be fair, a lot of people think cloaking tech is just a myth - it's been experimented with but no faction managed to design it on their own.
255** Which is funny when you remember that, in the prequel ''VideoGame/{{Starlancer}}'', the Coalition has Basilisks flying around everywhere. The game's "Attack on Pearl Harbor" is carried out exclusively with them (of course, the premise of ''Freelancer'' is that the nations in the Coalition didn't ''go'' with them to Sirius, so there is a HandWave, but...)
256*** It's mentioned in game dialog that cloaking is perfectly possible, it just requires way too much power ("the power of 10 battleship cores"). Presumably the coalition came up with some way to cut that down, possibly the same way as the [[spoiler:Nomads]]
257*** It's also possible that the old Coalition cloaking method is simply obsolete with more modern sensors capable of seeing right through it. TechnologyMarchesOn quite a bit in 800 years.
258* ''VideoGame/EVEOnline'' has cloaking as an ability. Pretty much all ships can do it with the right equipment (although it cripples the combat abilities of everything but specialized Covert Ops and Recon Vessels). It is the subject of much controversy in the community, as it is widely used by pirates and carebears alike.
259** To clarify, any ship can equip regular cloaking modules, but this completely ruins targeting speed, and when the cloak is turned on, your ship's maximum speed is reduced dramatically, you must maintain a minimum of 2000 meters distance away from objects or the cloak breaks, and if for any reason your cloak turns off, you can't target anything for 30 seconds, so you're effectively just sitting there, invisible to enemies on the Overview, probes and directional scans. The Covert Ops cloak has far less prohibitive penalties and more flexibility, in fact allowing Covert Ops, Recon Cruisers and Strategic Cruisers using the Covert Configuration subsystem to warp around freely with it, making them invaluable for scouting and intelligence gathering. Black Ops battleships don't suffer the targeting and velocity penalties when operating regular cloaks, [[FridgeLogic but it raises the question of why they're described as]] [[InformedAttribute valuable for sneak attacks when they can't use the Covert Ops cloak like Stealth Bombers can]].
260*** Well, being able to drop a warp-point that allows other stealth craft to drop in from several star-systems away without the usual downside (that everyone else in the system can see the beacon and come kill you) is pretty valuable for sneak attacks. It is a multiplayer game, not every ability is based on what a single player can do by himself.
261* ''VideoGame/StarFoxAssault'': The first mission features Stealth Fighters... which take too long to fire to act on the surprise element.
262** Technically, they aren't fighters. In the pre-mission cutscene, they were depicted as being used as long-range missile launchers, and may have also been attacking from the flank. They seem purposed to attack the Cornerian cruisers instead of smaller, interceptor sized craft.
263* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'': you can't use the stealth tool while outside of a planet's atmosphere.
264* The manual for ''Frontier: VideoGame/{{Elite}} 2'' advised switching off one's engines, as the trail of bright blue plasma made one's ship relatively easy to eyeball at a distance. Like much of the manual's advice it was pure fiction (the game had trivial AI).
265* ''VideoGame/EliteDangerous'' has sensor technology based on heat, and it is possible to mask your heat signature in 2 ways: 1. By shutting down all heat generating systems and allowing the ship to cool down to the surrounding temperature of space, and 2. By closing off the ship's radiators in "Silent running" mode. This will make your ship very hard to target, but has the downside of causing your ship to overheat, with eventual catastrophic consequences. You can stave off this possibility for a time by launching a heat sink unit into space, which will use a coolant purge to dump all your waste heat into a launchable block (with the added benefit of the heat sink being hot enough to be considered a valid target as well).
266* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} 2: Test of Time'' - the most advanced stealth unit can move unseen through the oceans of an Earth-like world, the dust oceans of a Mars-type planet and even the clouds of a gas giant, but not through the fourth map, which uses [[SpaceIsAnOcean space as the equivalent terrain type of Ocean]]. Its Civilopedia entry explicitly states that "it cannot move in space; there's nothing to hide beneath."
267* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' features cloaking devices, which are {{hand wave}}d as a series of counter-sensor arrays and a light-masking system that render ships with a cloaking section undetectable except from ships with deep scan arrays. Unfortunately, it only takes one deep scan ship to detect a whole fleet of cloakers and cloaked ships are extremely expensive and cannot fire while cloaked. In addition, obtain cloaking is all up the RandomNumberGod and Hivers, Humans and Tarka will do so less than average. Still, cloaked ships can be very devastating in the right situation, especially when used as a first strike against someone who lacks cloak-detecting capability, as cloaked fleets cannot be seen on the tactical map.
268** The even rarer Improved Cloaking allows for shooting while cloaking, albeit with a 50% increased cooldown on all weapons. This gives cloaked fleets a tremendous advantage against fleets without deep scan arrays. However, the game's AI is quite adept at researching and building spotter ships after the initial strikes, and can also spot where the fire is coming from and dumbfire weapons at "empty space" to try and hit you (missiles and torpedoes will not lock, though).
269*** However, without evidence of the destruction of cloaked ships, the AI can continue to fire at empty space after the cloaked vessel is long gone.
270*** Unfortunately for the AI, they will fire even if their own ships are in the way - you can get the enemy to destroy more of its own fleet with just a couple of cloaked ships. Improved AI AM Liir cruiser dancing circles around heavily armed and slow Hiver ships? HilarityEnsues.
271** The sequel makes stealth more useful by putting more emphasis on sensor range and ship (presumably electromagnetic) signatures. Deep Scan no longer instantly defeats cloak but increases the detection range. Since tactical combat starts with all sides in Accelerated Time, which only reverts to real-time once opposing forces are detected, researching stealth technologies gives you a chance of getting closer to an enemy before Accelerated Time drops, which may make all the difference when you have brawlers and the enemy is running missile buses.
272* A few space vessels in ''VideoGame/EmpireAtWar[[ColonCancer : Forces of Corruption]]'' can cloak. The ''Vengeance''-class frigate and hero ship ''Merciless'' for the Zann Consortium, and the TIE Phantom for the Empire. As well, the original Empire at War mentions cloaking in the profile for one of the planets.
273* One of the campaigns in ''VideoGame/TieFighter'' involves chasing after a traitorous Imperial officer in possession of a new, much more energy efficient cloaking device (efficient enough to be workable on a Blockade Runner). Too bad he didn't consider that Grand Admiral Thrawn might have anticipated that he'd eventually flee his doomed Star Destroyer on said ship, and plant a little ''surprise'' in the cloaking device before it was stolen...
274* Averted in ''VideoGame/FreeSpace''. The stealth fighters are very similar to stealth fighter planes of today - designed to be nearly invisible to radar, but not to normal vision. Hence they're very effective scouts while in the nebula, but presumably would be rather less so in open space.
275** Much like the F-15 vs F-22 note below, whilst it is quite possible to ''see'' the [[http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTF_Pegasus GTF Pegasus]] and [[http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GVF_Ptah GVF Ptah]] yet be completely unable to acquire a lock on them. In fact, you cannot even ''target'' them, which means you must gun for the fighters on manual rather than relying on the guidance/lead reticule. Of course, you can still hit them with your main guns and unguided secondary weaponry such as rockets.
276** Don't forget that the testing (and thus presumably use) of those takes place in a nebula, which means plenty of background noise (including, judging from the game's nebulae, thermal) to hide your ship in AND you have a hard time even seeing it with your own eyes.
277** The GTF Pegasus is still tough to hit even outside of a nebula. The ship has mostly black paint, meaning it's hard to see against the background of space. They are also razor-thin, meaning that they're fragile, but really hard to hit except from above and below.
278* ''VideoGame/ConquestFrontierWars'': Has this an a borrowed alien technology, while the humans get to use this for two of their ships the aliens can even cloak themselves and other friendly ships.
279* ''VideoGame/StarControl'' has the Ilwrath, whose warships can turn invisible. We're never told how it works, but nobody can see Ilwrath ships until they fire, except by stars they block. Fortunately for everyone else, their attack range is pathetically short. And since the positions of combatants are directly opposite relative to the center of the screen, its general location is obvious, which reduces the net effect to "somewhat harder to hit" and having to aim with normally homing weapons.
280** Fortunately for the Ilwrath, their ships will ''always'' decloak facing the enemy, no matter which way they're facing when under cloak (this is to counteract that fact that players flying them also can't see them).
281** The third game features the Heralds, whose ship is an {{Expy}} of the Ilwrath Avenger in terms of speed and maneuverability that replaces its short-range flame weapon with a long-range (unguided) missile.
282* ''VideoGame/Battlezone1998'' had the RED (Radar Echo Dampening) Field that masked the tank's radar signature, hiding it from non-visual detection and making radar-tracking missiles useless. There was also the Phantom VIR that hid the target visually, preventing the Shadow ILS (Image Locking System) missile from tracking it. However, the exhaust of the V-Thrusters and the dust kicked up by them were still visible. In-fact, the glowing dot on the cockpit still shows up [[SnipingTheCockpit through the sniper scope]].
283** ''The Red Odyssey'' introduces Chinese cloaking technology which was derived from the Pegasus relic that they stole from the CCA on Ganymede, allowing every offensive unit to cloak without consuming Nano-Ammo, the only caveat is that they are unable to fire while cloaked versus the above-mentioned Special weapons. It also likes to suffer a PlotDrivenBreakdown in the Chinese campaign.
284** In the sequel, a vibrating topographic map is the sign of a Scion Jammer operating within radar range; it messes with every enemy that can detect it so that their radars only show friendlies.
285* In ''VideoGame/AFinalUnity'' the Chodak have a "chameleon field" that sends out false sensor readings. A 20-meter-long probe appears to be a part of a space station on sensors and tricorders but is clearly alien in nature upon visual inspection (One wonders what Geordi saw when he looked at it). It's only visible on sensors when one cycles randomly through sensor frequencies so the chameleon field can't anticipate how it's being scanned. When the probe makes its escape the Enterprise follows it, but loses it in an asteroid field when it changes its sensor profile to appear as one of the asteroids and cuts its engines to have the same motion as an asteroid. Not quite a stealth system since the chameleon field has to appear to be ''something'' but still appears to be anything but a Chodak ship.
286* ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion 2'' has Stealth Field making the ship undetectable at interstellar distances, Cloaking Device (also available in the first game) that does the same and makes the ship harder to hit as long as it doesn't fire, and Phasing Cloak that does the same and grants invisibility on the tactical map, but only for 10 turns (or until the ship fires).
287** The [=iOS=] port ''VideoGame/StarbaseOrion'' doesn't have any means to cloak a ship in battle. An extremely space-consuming device can be researched an installed on a ship that allows it to hide any details of the fleet while it's in flight from long-range sensors. In addition, the leader Tyrrhenius is the equivalent of the Sealth Field from ''[=MoO2=]''. Magistrate X can keep a whole star system hidden. However, in game terms, all this does is make the system appear neutral on the galaxy map and hide any fleets in it. Selecting it will still show who owns the planets (which means it really only works against [=AIs=]).
288* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' has an unimportant scan reveal Samus employs this trope with her Gunship while she's out in the field. [[VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes The sequel]] mentions the Space Pirates struggling to maintain their own application of the trope due to low resources, difficulty resupplying, and attacks by the Ing Horde.
289* ''VideoGame/StarRuler'' has stealth technologies, but all they do is make the ship harder to hit.
290* ''VideoGame/{{Allegiance}}'' has cloaking devices equippable for certain ships. They don't make you fully invisible; instead they temporarily reduce your detection signature, meaning enemies must be at a closer range than normal to see you. With a cloaked, stripped-down ship and good piloting you can be right on top of them and they won't know you're there until you start shooting.
291* ''Star Crusader'' has an unusual way of handling stealth in space, at least for video games. There is no cover-all cloaking device. Stealth missions are only possible in vessels specifically designed for stealth, and staying stealthy is a matter of keeping your distance from enemy vessels while minimizing the energy emissions you produce. Thrust, steering movements and firing weapons all cause said emissions. The end result is much like trying to crawl through a field of waist-high grass patrolled by guards who stand up straight.
292* In ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'', a cloaking device is one of the subsystems you can pick up. Normally you have to break cloak to fire, but another subsystem allows you to fire through cloak.
293** You can travel to a nebula to evade the rebel fleet which slows their pursuit, but disables your sensors.
294* ''VideoGame/{{Ascendancy}}'' has cloaking generators. The ones built in orbit or on the planet's surface prevent the enemy from seeing any orbital or surface structure, respectively... but not firing on them. They can still be useful but to a limited extent. They can also be present on ships, but all that does is defeat any enemy scans to see what devices you have on-board.
295* ''VideoGame/StarTrekAwayTeam'' has the USS ''Incursion'', a modified ''Defiant''-class ship equipped with an experimental holographic masking system. It allows the ''Incursion'' to look like any other ship the crew chooses, presumably also modifying the warp signature to match. The technology appears in other games, with the ''Incursion'' herself having a cameo in ''[[VideoGame/StarTrekArmada Star Trek: Armada II]]''. The use of the tech is a major plot point in ''[[VideoGame/StarTrekStarfleetCommand Star Trek: Starfleet Command 3]]'', with the Romulans claiming that the tech violates the Treaty of Algeron in spirit, if not in letter.
296* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' has three types of cloaks: Normal cloak, which a player can activate outside of battle and is pretty good for alpha strikes; Battle Cloak, which allows a player to cloak while on red alert, good for escaping a beating; and Enhanced Battle Cloak, which is the same as Battle Cloak, but gives you the added bonus of firing torpedoes while cloaked. The problem here is who has it and at what level. The Federation has three ships with ''optional'' normal cloaking - the ''Defiant''-class type, the ''Galaxy-X''-class type and the ''Avenger''-class type - three ships with built-in normal cloaking - the three Intel ships. All Klingon-based ships get normal cloak except for C-Store bought ships, Tier 5 ships, and the B'Rel Bird of Prey Retrofit. All Romulan ships get Battle Cloak except for the T'varo Light Warbird Retrofit and the Dreadnought Warbirds. And these problems tend to cause a lot of grief with players.
297* Rogue-archetype ships in ''VideoGame/RingRunnerFlightOfTheSages'' have hulls coated with a material called perlite, which allows them to become invisible.
298-->'''Dominus Delooese''': Every time we have a Rogue battle, I hear the same complaints. It's always: "I can't see them." "It's too confusing." [[FakingTheDead "How many times did that guy die?"]] Well, switch yourself to adult mode and deal with it!
299* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': The [[PlayerCharacter Tenno]] operatives travel around In Liset "stealth dropships", which can apparently remain undetected from as close as visible range. A big factor is probably how tiny the Lisets are -- despite the moniker of dropships they're not much bigger than a bedroom. When not in use, the dropships are docked to the slightly larger Orbiters, which are stealthy enough to float in the middle of enemy Grineer/Corpus fleets and are capable of easily going into FTL the second they release their cloaking. They completely outclass all other stealth and detection systems, making it very difficult to force the Tenno to fight a traditional war.
300* Stealth is possible in ''VideoGame/SpaceEngineers'', however it is DifficultButAwesome at best and AwesomeButImpractical at worst. In order to run silent one needs to use a small vessel, paint it (dark) grey, dim all external lights, disable comms broadcasting (excepting laser antennae, which are nearly impossible to trace) and locator beacons, then hide behind or inside an asteroid - or linger beyond visual range. Even then, a simple zoomed-camera sweep is likely to result in detection.
301* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
302** The UNSC has "Prowler" stealth craft which are designed to have minimal emissions, radar signature, and visibility. While earlier models had to rely on crude photoreactive panels for active camouflage, later models utilize reverse-engineered [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Covenant]] (and on rare occasions, [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]]) stealth systems. However, any Prowler that makes a jump into slipspace is required to dump their nukes before returning to realspace, in order to avoid any Cerenkov radiation giving their reentry away.
303** Both the Covenant and Forerunners have even more advanced stealth capabilities, as they're capable of cloaking entire capital ships.
304* In ''VideoGame/Stars1995'', the FogOfWar prevents detecting ships until they are within range of a ship or planet scanner. Applying cloaking fields, or playing as a Hyper Stealth race, reduces the effective range of enemy scanners for detecting your ships.
305* ''VideoGame/CryingSuns'': There are multiple ways to make your squadrons invisible, and in all cases an invisible squadron remains so until it attacks or takes damage. If it comes out of stealth by attacking, that attack will inflict [[BackStab extra damage]].
306** Ghost and Wraith Fighters will turn invisible after a few seconds of not attacking or taking damage. Wraiths become invisible faster, and when they decloak they release a shockwave that stuns adjacent enemy squadrons.
307** The Invisibility Projector is a battleship weapon which turns all squadrons in the targeted area invisible.
308** The Asteroid Field Holo-Mapper auxiliary system lets your squadrons turn invisible by entering an asteroid field.
309** The Gyges Field Generator auxiliary system is a cloaking device for your battleship. Whenever you encounter a hostile battleship, there is a 50-50 chance that the Gyges Field will activate, concealing you from the enemy. You can then slip away without a fight or ambush the enemy battleship.
310** The Geno-class battleship's core system allows your squadrons with innate stealth capabilities (i.e., your Ghosts and Wraiths) to enter stealth as soon as they're deployed instead of having to wait a few seconds, and it increases the damage they inflict with their BackStab attack.
311* ''VideoGame/VGAPlanets'': A FourX game which features (among others) expies of Franchise/StarTrek races, and so some factions have cloaking ships which can't be seen, attacked or robbed when said cloaks are engaged. There are disadvantages, the cloaks burn extra fuel, you can't perform any other special mission, and even a single point of damage renders a cloak unusable. Plus you can still plow into an opponent's SpaceMines.
312* The Spectre body in ''VideoGame/NovaDrift'' can go invisible when it's immobile or moving slowly, and the damage of its weapon increases the longer it stays cloaked. However, any action such as firing weapons, deploying constructs, or moving too fast will break stealth.
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315[[folder:Webcomics]]
316* Part of [[BigBad Fructose Riboflavin's]] shtick in ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob'' is that he invented a spaceship cloaking design years ago which he has carefully kept secret and which he can [[MacGyvering cobble together out of stray bits]] in a short time when necessary. It's a modification to the ship's artificial gravity system (much of Nemesite technology seems to be based on artificial gravity), creating a gravitational lensing effect around the ship. He's amazed when [[GadgeteerGenius Galatea]] deduces how his design works before he can explain it.
317* While Stealth in the sense of cloaking has not come up in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'', this trope has been touched upon when the company wanted to [[AWolfInSheepsClothing make its warship look like a freighter]]. Given the [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-09-10 vast difference]] in the size (and thus power output) of a warship and a freighter's power plants this only worked when the warship was more or less totally shut down inside a freighter several times its size. As in, "Hot Wheels toy in a sports bottle."
318* The Void Angels in ''Webcomic/StarPower'' are renowned for their stealth tech that renders their ships invisible, even at close range. It's played with somewhat, in that it's not a widely available piece of technology, and the heroes are able to subvert it when it comes to the larger Archon ships; they use a powerful astronomy telescope to notice the patterns of light distortion from nearby star systems that the stealth tech leaves in its wake. This doesn't help against the smaller fighter craft, but even these are limited to hit and run tactics; the stealth tech can't be activated when firing weapons, and attempting to rapidly shift in and out of stealth can burn it out fast.
319[[/folder]]
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321[[folder:Web Original]]
322* The difficulty in doing this is acknowledged in ''Website/OrionsArm''. During the Interplanetary Era the only options were [[ArmorIsUseless hide and seek with bazookas]] or [[WeHaveReserves using tons of ships]]. By the modern era a large empire can usually acquire a few of the reactionless drives developed by the AI Gods, making stealth practical again. In addition the Hider faction has developed a few technologies to limit heat signatures, but they can't eliminate it entirely and it's not like they go to war with anyone. The highest of the high AI Gods have developed [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/493e974094949 "Void Ships,"]] which are ''completely'' undetectable (even by vision) by anyone except those same AI Gods. They operate on principles so advanced that even among the AI Gods, there's only maybe a dozen of them that actually understand how the hell a Void Ship works, and they are not in a hurry to share the technology with anyone else.
323* Averted in a section of the podcast Novel "The Crypt". A stealth ship is described as only being able to go a few weeks undetected (which seems like a long time, except they're observing a science vessel and it's escort looking for something in space, which also would take a long time), during which the heat rises to uncomfortable levels and almost all systems (including most of the AI, and even their holographic display) must be shut down to prevent that time from lowering even more. When a [[spoiler:fire occurs, they're forced to flee immediately]].
324* [[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php This page]] has a detailed examination of this issue.
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327[[folder:Western Animation]]
328* ''WesternAnimation/ExoSquad'' had the cloaking technology invented by SpacePirates based on ''[[AppliedPhlebotinum dark matter]]''. [[HandWave And that's pretty much all that's said about it]]. They have brought up the issue of cloaked ships being tracked by heat or expended fuel... once or twice. Otherwise, decent size space ships and mecha are able to cloak and escape detection all the time.
329* On ''WesternAnimation/ChallengeOfTheGobots'', Cy-Kill's spacecraft has a "cloaking device" in the first miniseries (which only makes it invisible to radar), and a "stealth device" for the rest of the series (which makes it completely invisible).
330* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' brought in an experimental cloaked vessel, that while extremely hard to track and invisible to the naked eyes could be tracked through its magnetic signature, and was unable to fire while cloaked. The current EU would later feature the ''Carrion Spike'', based on it and with a much improved cloak.
331* Parodied on ''WesternAnimation/TrippingTheRift''; Chode is so cheap, the escape pod's stealth mode simply produces a starprint curtain that surrounds it.
332* The same happens in the space opera parody episode of ''WesternAnimation/AvengerPenguins''.
333[[/folder]]
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