I'll keep it simple. I personally think it serves no purpose.
In the past two weeks we've had a uptick of survivors ahelping asking our admins/senior mods for CLF equipment. We also had issues with hostile survivors decapping squad leaders, specs, and smart gunners which negatively effects the round balance since it removes those slots from the game.
Before I write up a giant gitlab for survivor rework, I want to get the thoughts and opinions of the community.