I think that the French still resent the fact that the US speaks English and not French.

That link was insightful. I find it difficult to believe that Chirac would be deluded enough to believe that France could ever be a superpower again, or that Europe wants to be 'led' by France. (Or Germany for that matter). England and France have been embroiled in so many petty trade disputes in the past couple of decades that the view of the average Brit is that the French are rather self-serving. (eg the one where they wanted English chocolate to be renamed because apparantly their definition of chocolate has to have a certain percentage of cocoa solids. Or that Champagne can only be French. And let's not even start on cheeses.)
Strangely, and I've never met a French person that I didn't like, and they can be very friendly. Visiting France is a pleasure, and simply attempting a conversation in French, regardless of you success, will turn a stranger into a friend. It's only their politics that seems to be affected.
Besides all this, the Europe Commission has a rigid structure of rotating leadership, so any thought that France entertains about being King of Europe is crazy.

...since they have less men, ships, planes, etc. than everybody else. Also, since they insist on designing most of them without any foreign cooperation, they are generally inferior to their American/British or Russian/Ukrainian/Indian counterparts

Remember that a lot of modern European aerospace technology consists of multinational projects. eg Matra/BAe missiles (France and UK), Eurofighter Typhoon (UK, Spain, Germany and Italy), Airbus Industrie (France, Spain, Germany and UK)