His mother's going to be unhappy with the changes to her car.
If I wanted a covert radio vehicle, I'd ... put one of those aerodynamic luggage pods on the roof of an SUV. I hope my government is at least that clever. I think those MADDF vehicles are only intended to be low profile, not covert.
You have just described the Shippable Direction Finding (SDF) package. The MADF vehicles have not been in use by the FCC for several years.
When the SDF was designed and built, an outside business was contracted to write the computer control program. The problem was the SDF software is Win98se based and as a result was being phased out.
The computers eventually began to crash and burn (not literally burn). If your control computer crashed, then it was replaced with a working (hopefully) computer.
I had investigated running the SDF program with current day computer operating with WinXP and installing the SDF program onto Win 98 se virtual computer. I requested but was not given the virtual computer software, reason given, they were not interested in having further work done with the SDF package.
SEveral months later a tech email was distributed advising that an 'engineer' was investigating running the SDF software as a virtual computer so that SDF could still be used. Hmmm, I wonder where he got that idea from?
In some ways, the SDF is a better system than the MDDF due to the much better antenna hardware. The SDF antennas system consists of two annular slot antennas and 8 printed circuit board UHF log periodic antennas that are effective up over 3 Ghz, possibly up to or over 4 Ghz in frequency.
The SDF also operates much better at lower frequencies than does the MDDF. I fixed a Freeband radio operator to a 1/2 mile radius from a distance of 35 miles. The location was verified by the operator of an MDDF vehicle that was 50 feet behind the vehicle with the modified CB radio.
And no, the MDDF is not intended to be "low profile", the MDDF is intended to be a covert vehicle. Most of the time the vehicles are operating with state issued license plates and use the Government plates only when necessary.