France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app • Hacker News Board

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#221

Post by vntok » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #166

vntok wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Track not the ship itself but the planes that take off and land on it. Many sites will expose their paths, you'll see the planes circling in a pattern around "some void" - that's the ship.

If de Gaulle is turning off AIS, it stands to reason that it's also turning off the transponders in the air wing.

Not at all, depends on the mission. In fact you can spot yesterday's location of the ship right now on flightradar.

It was patrolling ~100km below Cyprus's main southern city.

Move the timeline to yesterday, find a non-Boeing military plane in that zone, enable flight traces and keep trying planes until you see an ovoidal pattern circling around "nothing"... but that nothingness moves over time.m; that's the ship.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#222

Post by exe34 » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #178

fxtentacle wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can rent access to nearly real-time custom satellite targeting for <$3k per image. That means while you're correct that not all countries can afford it, most can.

So you task the satellite to where you know the ship is?

Would you prefer to lose it first?

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#223

Post by HoldOnAMinute » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #88

An aircraft carrier can be seen with the naked eye from 10 meters above the shore for about 28 miles. So the entire Spanish coast, Moroccan coast, Algerian coast, mallorca, sardegna, Sicily, tunesia, the Greek isles, and who knows how many cruise ships, fishing vessels, and commercial aircraft all saw this ship.

If you can guess what shape the runner was going in, you could infer a lot of information from that squiggly line in the picture. You could determine the ship's course and speed.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#224

Post by loeg » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

philipwhiuk wrote: post #191

PeterStuer wrote: post #185

Many questions: I can assume Strava is GDPR compliant and would not publish this information without the sailors concent? Does the French military not stress in their training the dangers of these data disclosures? Why does the carriers network not have adequate measures against this sort of data exfiltration? Why is Le Monde tracking a french sailors location data?

> I can assume Strava is GDPR compliant and would not publish this information without the sailors concent? Historically there was a problem where user's data was aggregated into a global view. But these days you'd have to follow the user on Strava to get this sort of track. I suspect that a journalist at Le Monde has a naval buddy on Strava and posted the story.

Surely the GPDR does not prevent users from consenting to share their data with a public audience.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#225

Post by seizethecheese » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

garyfirestorm wrote: post #208

elif wrote: post #77

I seriously doubt there is a country on earth which lacks the capability to detect an aircraft carrier's presence in the Mediterranean sea. We are not talking about stealth vehicles.

We couldn’t find a commercial jet (MH370). Both, while it was still flying in the air and after it was presumably lost in the ocean. They couldn’t track it in the air nor can they still find its remains after looking for it for so long. This problem is not trivial.

A commercial jet is both way smaller and faster moving than an aircraft carrier. I suspect this is like saying: why can’t you see the fly in the photo, the turtle is right there!

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#226

Post by rtkwe » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

signatoremo wrote: post #193

rtkwe wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a handful of frigates mostly but those could go out as far as the Med pretty easily. One of their ships was sunk near Sri Lanka.

It was sunk there because it attended an on-off event in India before that. Iran's ships don't get on regular trips far from home.

They don't but it shows they could.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#227

Post by OscarCunningham » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

jcalx wrote: post #85

paxys wrote: post #2

Is an aircraft carrier's location supposed to be secret? Pretty hard to hide from a satellite I'd imagine.

I would have thought so too but Naval Gazing has a short series [0] on why it's not as dire as one might think. An aircraft carrier's location being "secret" in this case is just one layer of the survivability onion [1] anyhow. (Caveat that as someone who takes a casual interest in this, I can't vouch for accurate this is at all.) [0] https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 [1] https://www.goonhammer.com/star…

Oh I get it, the onion is made of Swiss cheese.

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#228

Post by Einenlum » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

Some people here say an aircraft carrier can be seen from satellites so it's not a big deal. They miss a point (as I did too): this means you can identify individuals present on the carrier, so they become vulnerable to investigation and blackmail. Another country could threaten this individual's family to give some important information or worse (sabotage).

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#229

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

garyfirestorm wrote: post #208

elif wrote: post #77

I seriously doubt there is a country on earth which lacks the capability to detect an aircraft carrier's presence in the Mediterranean sea. We are not talking about stealth vehicles.

We couldn’t find a commercial jet (MH370). Both, while it was still flying in the air and after it was presumably lost in the ocean. They couldn’t track it in the air nor can they still find its remains after looking for it for so long. This problem is not trivial.

[deleted]

Re: France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app

#230

Post by sa46 » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #23

This is a common problem across militaries. It is difficult to stop soldiers from leaking their location if they have access to mobile phones and the Internet. Individual cases are usually a combination of naïveté, ignorance, and an unwillingness to be inconvenienced. It still happens in Ukraine, where immediate risk to life and limb is much more severe than this case.

About 15 years ago, our brigade conducted a training exercise to test overall readiness. The opposing force (OPFOR) figured out how to triangulate the brigade headquarters' position using Tinder.

Tinder provided 1-mile granularity, so OPFOR would roam around until they had enough points to locate the headquarters. Then, they'd artillery it out of existence. The brigade commander was most displeased—moving a brigade headquarters is not for the weak or fainthearted.