Originally Posted by
rickair7777
I've been in the room for that, it's real. But they mostly use airstrikes. UBL had a lot of help to stay hidden. The PAK ISI was pretty familiar with the TTPs used to locate and track badguys... and they are, shall we say, sympathetic to the badguys.
FCC has mobile DF units for exactly this reason... locating unauthorized users of the RF spectrum. Otherwise it would be the wild wild west out there.
The challenge for aircraft is it would take a while to get a plane DF-ed when no other planes were within the RMS error. Once you do that, just have feds meet the plane at the gate and secure the CVR as evidence. Would also need a flight that landed within 2 hours of the offense. So some effort required, but the FCC employs people who do that for a living. You'd only have to do it once and all the rest would STHU...
I'm not sure the FAA would be successful in securing CVR data as evidence. The administrator is prohibited from using ANY data on the CVR for any type of civil penalty or certificate action. This isn't a union thing either, it's in the CFR's. If they tried to secure the CVR data for this reason, any lawyer worth a grain of salt could likely get this data excluded quoting FAR 121.359 (h). In fact, I'm pretty sure it was also disclosed that the FAA has never, in history, listened to a CVR recording that didn't involve a serious accident, or where the NTSB balked at investigating.