Thanks for the information Zainol. After further testing, it appears a piece of software on the machines is what was causing the driver to disappear and/or try to update the firmware randomly and fail. The software was NetMotion Diagnostics. After removing this the air card does not disappear and reappear at all and is not getting stuck during firmware update. It completes successfully.
The issue at hand now is randomly disconnecting after 5-10 minutes of being connected. I am not getting more than 2-3 bars in my area on either ATT or Verizon currently. When I went outside with the machines to test they pull 3-4 bars but the connection still drops after the same 5-10 minute period. I have since rolled back to a previous build of both skylight and the drivers from Dell to continue testing.