Officer reportedly leaks location of French aircraft carrier with Strava run

A French officer has reportedly revealed the location of an aircraft carrier deployed towards the Middle East after publicly registering a run on sports app Strava.

He used a smartwatch to record his run and upload the activity to the app, the paper said, creating a map that showed his location.

The vessel is the main part of a carrier strike group recently deployed to the eastern Mediterranean by the French, the ministry of armed forces said, as tensions in the region continue due to the Iran war.

In a statement to AFP news agency, the French armed forces said the reported incident did “not comply with the current instructions” and appropriate measures would be taken if the report was true.

The location of the vessel was said by Le Monde to have been northwest of Cyprus, around 100km (62 miles) from the Turkish coast, with satellite images capturing the carrier and its escort.

Aboard the vessel are 20 fighter jets, two surveillance aircraft and three helicopters.

The deployment is part of France’s recent bolstering of its military presence in the Middle East, which French President Emmanuel Macron described as strictly “defensive”.

This is not the first time an activity on the app has exposed sensitive details.

Le Monde previously reported runs shared by Macron’s bodyguards jeopardised his location in several occasions, while Secret Service agents accompanying then-US President Joe Biden also shared their whereabouts on the app in 2024.

A similar report that year said the app showed bodyguards for Russian President Vladimir Putin at luxurious properties the Kremlin denies owning.

Another function on the app, its ‘heatmap’, has previously come under fire for sharing the location of exercise routes of military personnel in bases around the world.

The heatmaps visualise all public activity recorded of all its users around the globe – allowing users to zoom in and explore different parts of the world.