That also strikes me as odd. When I was deployed, we had plenty of contractors/DOD civilians to handle various technical things, and to help maintain continuity while the rest of us rotated in and out of the theater. They didn't need to be commissioned.
If these execs were experienced engineers that needed to be embedded in a unit in the field, maybe, and definitely not at O-5. Usually these sorts of urgently-needed experts become instructors and teach troops the specific technical skills without the need for being enlisted/commissioned/warrant themselves.
Someone more familiar with the political games inside the Pentagon will better understand this decision.
It’s probably a fun ego boost for the execs involved. And it makes them subject to following orders, to military jail for not obeying, etc, which is presumably a nice thing to have in your back pocket when managing egostistic jerks.
A Lieutenant Colonel in an advisory role would have to engage in an astoundingly epic screwup to court-martialed under the UCMJ. They'll be counseled behind closed doors long before getting formally charged with Article 90 or 92.
An Article 88 (or 133!) case involving these guys would be a really funny scandal, though.
Contractors down range used to have something like a company logo or something as their rank, you could always tell because it would be some guy with a gut and long hair in fatigues with a weird rank. Give them that and let them feel like soldiers, not an oak leaf
I was a contractor "down range" and the only dress code we had was no shorts, no open-toed shoes. The only time anyone would mess with us was at the chow hall if we didn't take off our hats or didn't have our helemts/flak jackets during alerts and then they just wouldn't let us inside unless we went to get them. Other than that they wouldn't bother us unless we were blatantly ignoring air raid sirens or smoking somewhere we shouldn't be.
When outside the wire we would, of course, follow the directions of the army escorts because they were unequivocally in charge. The only time I can remember anyone chastising us was because we were getting overly aggressive in traffic up in the Kurdish region and there was an incident the previous day where some mayor's son had his engine block shot out so they were like, "you guys need to cut that shit out, these are our allies up here".
If these execs were experienced engineers that needed to be embedded in a unit in the field, maybe, and definitely not at O-5. Usually these sorts of urgently-needed experts become instructors and teach troops the specific technical skills without the need for being enlisted/commissioned/warrant themselves.
Someone more familiar with the political games inside the Pentagon will better understand this decision.