A French Navy sailor inadvertently revealed the real-time location of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle after uploading a deck jog to the fitness app Strava with his profile set to public, French newspaper Le Monde reported Thursday.
The sailor, identified only as “Arthur,” logged a 7.23-kilometer run on the morning of March 13 aboard the carrier as it sailed the eastern Mediterranean northwest of Cyprus, approximately 100 kilometers from the Turkish coast.
His GPS-tracked route mapped repeated parallel passes across the ship’s flight deck, spanning no more than 300 meters in width. Le Monde confirmed the vessel’s position by cross-referencing the Strava data against satellite imagery taken shortly after the run.
President Emmanuel Macron announced on March 3 that he had ordered the Charles de Gaulle strike group to redeploy from Baltic Sea NATO exercises to the Middle East, days after the outbreak of US-Israeli military operations against Iran.
By March 9, the carrier had reached Crete, where Macron visited in person and announced that France would lead a coalition naval mission to escort merchant shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The strike group includes a nuclear attack submarine, frigates from France, Spain, and the Netherlands, and a fleet oiler.
France’s Armed Forces General Staff confirmed to Le Monde that posting the run violated current digital security instructions. Military leadership acknowledged the breach and moved to contain the fallout.
Arthur’s public Strava account had been leaking the carrier’s movements for weeks. A February 14 run placed him off the Cotentin Peninsula near Cherbourg. Later activity logged him in Copenhagen on February 26 and 27. Satellite imagery confirmed the ship’s position after each session.
Le Monde also identified several other sailors aboard the Charles de Gaulle with public Strava profiles, including at least one who posted photographs showing the ship’s location, along with images of the deck and crew.
The incident marks the latest in a series of Strava-related military security failures. In January 2018, analyst Nathan Ruser identified US and allied military installations in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq through Strava’s publicly released global activity heatmap.
In January 2025, French Navy submariners shared patrol data via the app — an episode officials characterized as personnel negligence. A separate Le Monde investigation in fall 2024 found that members of the security details of the French, American, and Russian presidents were fully traceable through their public Strava accounts.
The Charles de Gaulle is France’s only aircraft carrier and the only nuclear-powered carrier built outside the United States.
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