penal being a "mid-close" range unit is an artificial constraint.
penal's mid and close range dps are not even that good. the wehr pio have better close range dps than the penal.
the penal are just crap. their dps is neither good enough at close range nor is it good enough at long range.
the american flame rifle was difficult to balance, because the flamethrower was an unique situation. It would not have made sense to nerf the rifleman in order to accommodate a DLC doctrine upgrade. The only sensible thing to do was to nerf the flamethrower itself in some way.
By comparison, the penal and flamethrower are irrevocably linked to each other. there's a lot more room to work here, because the penal would be balanced and designed around the fact it's got a flamethrower.
Only if penals come with the flame thrower, else we run into the problem with the 221/222 where the upgrade was a nobrainer but crippled the unit without forking out the muni.