FROM RUSSIA WITH NO LOVE: If the premise of the Trump administration’s latest nuclear posture review needed validation, Russia President Vladimir Putin delivered it today in blunt language, along with an animated depiction of a new nuclear cruise missile he said can evade any U.S. defenses. The Pentagon’s new nuclear policy includes plans for new, lower yield options meant to counter Russia’s growing arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.

Speaking in a nationally televised address, Putin taunted the U.S., according to news reports from Moscow. “Efforts to contain Russia have failed, face it,” Putin was quoted as saying by Bloomberg, which noted Putin punctuated his nearly two-hour address with video clips of new weapons, including underwater drones, intercontinental missiles and a hypersonic system he said “heads for its target like a meteorite.”

The Guardian reported that Russia developed the weapons due to the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty signed with the Soviet Union. “You didn’t listen to our country then,” Putin said, “Listen to us now.”

NUKING RUSSIA? Yesterday, Russia's foreign minister accused the Trump administration of helping European countries get ready to use "tactical nuclear weapons against Russia."

“It should be clear to one and all that the U.S. military thereby prepares the European countries for using tactical nuclear weapons against Russia,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a United Nations conference on disarmament. Lavrov reiterated Russia’s belief that NATO nuclear exercises involving non-nuclear European countries violate international law restricting the spread of nuclear weapons. He accused the United States of taking “an outspokenly aggressive stance” by deploying nuclear weapons in Europe — a posture he portrayed as a vivid threat of attack against Russia.

PACKING HEAT AT WORK: President Trump says he still thinks it’s crazy that military personnel, especially those who are trained marksmen, are barred from carrying guns in the workplace on domestic military bases and at other Department of Defense facilities. During yesterday’s televised meeting at the White House with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Trump again evoked the 2015 shootings at a Naval Reserve Center and storefront recruiting office in Chattanooga, Tenn. He repeated an argument he first made last week, that if anyone should be able to have guns at work, it should be members of the U.S. military.

“In fact I'm looking to get rid of gun-free zones in the military. We have military bases with gun free zones,” Trump told the members of Congress seated around a large table. “We had five incredible soldiers, three of whom were championship shooters, that were nowhere near their gun, and this whack-job walked in and killed all of them,” Trump said, “And they were defenseless. And if they had their guns he would have been gone in a second.”

The 2015 attacks actually killed four Marines and a sailor, and prompted a complete Pentagon review resulting in a revised, highly-detailed policy governing when U.S. military and DoD personnel can carry either their own firearms, or government-issued ones, at work.

AWAITING ORDERS THEY HOPE WON’T COME: Meanwhile, it’s been a week and the Pentagon has still not received any orders to review the gun policy again, and privately some officials tell me they hope this is another presidential trial balloon that pops before too much work has to be done. As shocking as it may sound, most military leaders think having everyone carrying guns on base or in government offices is a prescription for accidents, and that security is best left to trained law enforcement.

Take the Pentagon, for example. There are 24,000 military and civilian personnel who work in the massive building and no matter the rank or job, no one carries a gun at work, except for police and security personnel. As we reported this week, the current policy, which runs 26 pages, does have exceptions for cases in which no security forces are close by, or when someone faces a unique threat, but generally leaves the gun-toting to law enforcement.

HIGH STAKES, HARD BARGAINING OVER NEXT F-35s: The three-star admiral who oversees the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program ever ($400 billion and rising) is promising to get a better deal for the taxpayers in negotiations with Lockheed Martin over the price for the next batch of F-35 joint strike fighters. In an hour-long session with reporters yesterday, Vice Adm. Mat Winter said Lockheed Martin is playing hardball, and so is he.

“Lockheed Martin is negotiating in good faith. We’re negotiating in good faith. We continue to make good progress,” Winter told reporters, but he also indicated the talks are not as friendly as they could be. “They could be much more cooperative or collaborative and we could seal this deal faster. We could. They choose not to, and that’s a negotiating tactic.” The last batch of 105 planes has a negotiated unit price of $94.3 million for the A-model of the stealthy jet, the most common variant that will be used by the Air Force. Winter is promising the next buy of 130 planes will have an even lower price tag.

And he warned the current crop of F-35s are still too pricey to continue to buy and operate. “The price is coming down, but it is not coming down fast enough,” Winter told reporters. “If it’s the same cost ratio into the future, as our fleet grows from the 280 aircraft to the 800-plus that we’ll have by the end of 2021, we will be unaffordable.”

WINTER’S SECRET WEAPON: Last year, Trump personally intervened with the head of Lockheed Martin as the deal was being wrapped up, and took credit for shaving a few million off the sticker price. Yesterday, asked if he could use a little help from the negotiator in chief this time around, Winter boasted that he had a “phenomenal” negotiator on his staff, a public servant he identified only as “Julie.”

“She will be negotiating not only lot 11, but all my future contracts for as long as I can keep her in government,” Winter said. “She will stare down anybody, and more important, she comes prepared with facts." Of course, if negotiations fail the Pentagon has the option of imposing a unilateral settlement, something Winter called a last-resort tactic. “We’re nowhere near that,” he said.

Winter is scheduled to testify on the state of the F-35 program before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces next Wednesday.

Good Thursday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @dailyondefense.