Limassol, Cyprus. The location of the French military aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was leaked via the GPS tracker of a young officer’s Strava sports app, Le Monde reported on Friday. The carrier had been located off the Limassol coast earlier this week.
Le Monde identifies Strava use aboard the vessel
“As the French naval task force moves closer to Iran, Le Monde has identified a French serviceman using the sports app in the middle of the Mediterranean. This security flaw has not been fixed despite our previous reports,” the newspaper said.
Le Monde said that in an effort to track the vessel’s location, one of the navy officers aboard used the app to record his run in real time.
Run data said to have revealed ship position
By using the application while running around the vessel’s deck on the morning of March 13, the officer revealed the location of the ship and its escort vessel, which Le Monde described as classified.
According to the newspaper, the vessels were north-west of Cyprus, around 100km from the Turkish coast.
Smartwatch upload made location accessible online
Le Monde said the officer recorded a 7km route that took a little over half an hour using his smartwatch.
The data was uploaded to his Strava profile online, making the information and the vessel’s location accessible to anyone on the internet almost in real time.
As of Friday morning, the vessel’s location could not be accessed via common tracking sites.
Earlier open-source indications of the carrier’s whereabouts
Indications of the Charles de Gaulle’s location had been made public earlier this week by data published on the open-source intelligence website Itamilradar.
According to the available data, French reconnaissance drones were spotted on radars flying south of Cyprus, indicating the ship’s position was south of Limassol.
Context amid regional deployment reports
The news of the ship’s location followed the French foreign ministry denying reports that it was planning to deploy the Charles de Gaulle to the Red Sea and potentially to the Strait of Hormuz, a key point for the international oil trade amid the deepening conflict in the Middle East.
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