A soldier on board has unintentionally revealed the exact position of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, key in the European defense of the eastern Mediterranean, near Cyprus.
As first revealed by the French newspaper The Worldthe fault that Arthur – not his real name – revealed his exact location was an application known as Strava, dedicated to sports activities.
As can be seen in the screenshot shared by the same newspaper, Arthur appeared running in circles in the middle of the Mediterranean Seawhich revealed its location.
All this, of course, thanks to the GPS system associated with the sports activity bracelet; an exercise of approximately 35 minutes and a little more than 7 kilometers traveled that exposed the French position in said sea.
Although this happened on March 13, it was not the only time that a military position has been leaked thanks to this application, as stated by the verification team. RTVE.
Strava is available in more than 180 countries and has a user base that is close to 150 million users, among whom are also professional athletes and, as in these cases, military personnel during their exercise.
As experts explained to the same medium at the time, in 2018 secret US bases in Syria or Afghanistan were able to be located, with heat maps in no man’s land.
These heat maps, which were a novel feature introduced by Strava, did not reveal exactly who was practicing an exercise, although these locations could be extractedbeing places far from the most normal areas.
In the specific case, the Charles de Gaulle is a nuclear aircraft carrier that France has deployed in the Mediterranean in response to the conflict between Israel and the United States against Iran, which means the revelation of the location of an important military asset.
Previously, this military aircraft carrier was located in the Baltic Sea conducting exercises for NATO, but was immediately moved following Emmanuel Macron’s announcement on March 3, 10 days before the location was made public because of Arthur.
Today, Cyprus is one of the areas in which the most aircraft carriers have been deployed, also by other European countries, after Iran’s attack on the island, which practically borders Israel and Lebanon.