WASHINGTON, June 26 (UPI) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a vision to protect France from nuclear ballistic missile attack, and he is determined to implement it.

Sarkozy's speech on defense strategy June 17 got little attention in the U.S. media, but it marked the most profound revolution in French strategic planning in more than 40 years.

Sarkozy channeled both the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in spelling out his vision of a transformed French armed forces that was far less troop-heavy and designed to react quickly and decisively, with state-of-the-art communications, weapons and transportation against threats both within Metropolitan France and far beyond.

Most of all, Sarkozy emphasized the importance of developing multilayered systems to defend France against ballistic missile attack, even if it were launched from thousands of miles away -- the most likely threat currently being Iran.

Sarkozy, as we noted in our companion BMD Watch column Tuesday, spelled out in considerable detail the kind of systems he wants to develop and deploy.