Cloak

The Enterprise-D cloaking in front of a Romulan warbird.

A cloaking device (or cloak) is a form of stealth technology that uses selective bending of light (and other forms of energy) to render a starship or other object completely invisible to the electromagnetic spectrum and most sensors. It has been encountered in varying forms over the centuries.

In order to function, a cloaking device needs to be tied into a ship's deflector shield grid.

Due to the enormous amount of power required to generate a cloaking field, there is by and large not enough power available to also power the weapons and shields. However, there have been several times when advances in cloaking technology have rendered this untrue.[[category:starship Systems]