The "run into the meat grinder" meme was real, but not the way Hollywood has shown us, and not actually limited to Penal Companies. Soviet Command would choose whatever option had the highest projected success rate with the lowest projected casualties. Sometimes this option was having infantry (not necessarily Penals) charge at fortifications or even over minefields, because this was seen as the best option given the options available.
Penal Troops for the most part were equipped and fed the same as anyone else, the draw of having Penal Troops for a Soviet Commander was that you could take your own men off the most dangerous part of the line and put Penal Troops there. Someone's going to be there regardless, but it may as well be the "expendable" troops rather than your own.
I like how you first accept that penal units were not used as Hollywood portrays just to ignore distinction between penal companies and battalions and feed right into Hollywood meme anyway.
There was nothing expendable about penal battalions, in case you haven't read it first time - they were made out of trained OFFICERS, not random potato farmers who said wrong word or ran wrong way.
change it into a normal ability, then it would be fine, but the hole supply-drop is stupid. 
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