The Pentagon is conducting a contract financing review that could alter its decades-old approach to paying defense contractors, a convoluted subject with a controversial history that the department's pricing chief has likened to a "third rail." Ever since the high-profile derailment of a 2018 policy intended to tie defense contractor cash flow to performance-based metrics, the Defense Department has wrestled with whether it should update its contract financing structure. In early 2021, DOD entered arrangements with the University of Tennessee,...