A French sailor accidentally revealed the location of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier whilst running on deck
This is reported by Le Monde.
French President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that France is redeploying the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean to assist allies in the conflict in the Middle East.
The presence of the French naval task force in the region is no secret, but it turns out that anyone can track the aircraft carrier’s movements. All because of the carelessness of one of the sailors, who went for a run on the deck.
To record his result — just over 7 kilometres covered in 35 minutes — he used a smartwatch on his wrist. He also uploaded this data to the Strava mobile app, which tracks users’ sporting activity via GPS.
What’s more, journalists discovered that the sailor’s account was set to public, meaning others could see him ‘doing laps’ in the middle of the sea.
The French military command, contacted by the newspaper, explained that this “does not comply with the rules”, about which sailors are “regularly informed”. They assured that appropriate measures would be taken.
But Le Monde emphasises that this is not the first such incident and, despite previous reports, no corrective action has been taken.
For example, in 2024, Le Monde published a full investigation, StravaLeaks, into how security agents for prominent figures such as Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin had posted their training sessions on the very same app, allowing other users to track the movements of these high-profile individuals.
