I guess both tbh. My favourite example here was M20. Mg range, extra armour, crew, smoke, crit repairs, standard repairs, better version of a teller. All on one unit. Now, after years of debating, free! bazooka was finally removed.
Coming back to major. A free squad with a lot of cool and powerful abilities and still some players would like it to be better. Hard to respond to such nonsense.
Calling the officers free was, and is, disingenuous
They provide bodies on the field, yes, but that's not the entire summation of their design. The major brings a mobile version of certain abilities but having those abilities is a core part of USF balance. What the army lacks elsewhere is compensated for with tech paced unlocks.
You could remove the squad if you wanted - but the features the major brings cant be so easily denied. Having them tied to the major is a relative weakness when the alternative is to give them to the base buildings, and the faction is better for it
AKA brits are still bad design. Sodding base howitzers. Every single patch has been slowly phasing those monstrosities out. Major arty is that feature, only done well.