RUN OF BAD LUCK

Sailor Accidentally Gives Away Ship’s Location While Jogging on Deck

The serviceman was reportedly logged into the Strava running app.

A French sailor accidentally exposed the location of an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean by going on a run on the deck. According to French outlet Le Monde, a serviceman aboard France’s flagship aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, logged a roughly 4.4-mile run on the deck on March 13 using the popular fitness tracking app Strava. Because his profile was set to public, his jog broadcast the ship’s position in near real time as it sailed in the Mediterranean Sea. The run revealed the carrier’s coordinates northwest of Cyprus, about 62 miles from the Turkish coast. Le Monde said it verified the breach using satellite imagery captured shortly afterward, which showed the 860-foot vessel in the same location. France had deployed the carrier days earlier, on March 3, amid heightened tensions following U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. The Armed Forces General Staff told the newspaper that the sailor violated digital security protocols and said “appropriate measures” would follow.