Profile of nee

Never seen such an ability, but then again, I've seen Soviet infantry squads besides Conscripts throw AT nades at my tanks. Heck, I've seen HMGs and even AT Guns throw AT nades at my tanks. This has been the case since game was released.

Organized how? Size or Official/ Community/ etc?

Really sick of this problem myself. If people have the custom map or custom mod donwloaded, someone's got some lameass custom victory strike or skin that prevents me from starting.

Goes to show how what priorities Relic's got.

SIX GAMES: 31m, 36m, 23m, 30m, 21m, 39m fo r a total of 180m, average 30m
ONE WAR SPOIL: new commander "Recon Support Company" (USF)

EIGHT GAMES: 29m, 23m, 24m, 9m, 25m, 30m, 27m, 38, for a total of 215m, average 26.875m
ONE WAR SPOIL: duplicate commander "Osttruppen Doctrine (Ost)

SIX GAMES: 31m, 34m, 29m, 25m, 33m, 33m for a total of 185m, average 30.83m
ONE WAR SPOIL: new bulletin "Officer Training: AT Guns" (UKF)

EIGHT GAMES: 23m, 23m, 36m, 24m, 37m, 21m, 10m, 29m for a total of 203m, average 25.375m
ONE WAR SPOIL: duplicate bulletin "Makeshift Artillery" (Ost)

FIVE GAMES: 16m, 14m, 34m, 14m, 33m for a total of 111m, average 22.2m
ONE WAR SPOIL: new bulletin "Spray and Pray (RU)

THREE GAMES: 41m, 31m, 30 for a total of 102m, average 34m
ONE WAR SPOIL: duplicate commander "Lightning War Doctrine"(Ost)

In this reply, summary data is:
-36 games
-6 drop occurrences
-6 actual spoils; 3 new, 3 duplicates
-total time 996 minutes, equivalent to uninterrupted gameplay time of 16 hours, 36 minutes
With this recent number of games, the average drop occurrence (996/6) is 166m or 2 hours, 46 minutes between drops.
Outliers: shortest time between drops was 102m, longest time 215m, or 3 hours, 35 minutes

Just my 2 cents on the matter.
Why try to push it into an elite unit?
Soviets were sort of based around multiple units but lacking a stronger veterancy/upgrade option.
Penals are considered dispensable infantry. If their stats are horrible, we can just compensate by their price. Penals and cons, with the prior acting more so a cheap close range unit while conscripts are more well-rounded with utility.

The problem is that in order to use this dispensable infantry, you have to invest fuel, time and at least one engineer squad to build T1...then invest more manpower than Conscripts to acquire this dispensable infantry.
In the meantime, a much more economical investment is to simply train more Conscripts. In other words, the design around Penals as dispensable infantry, if they ever were for that purpose, is entirely flawed. So you're not only sacrificing manpower income, but fuel and time as well as unit presence.
Scout sniper squads can still get screening options by the Conscripts and Engineers you have trained. So from a purely manpower standpoint Penals mean nothing. The only true benefit of Penals is a larger squad for flamer duty (circumstantial given Engineers has same capability), and Satchel Bomb (unique, but is it always better than just flaming a bunker or garrisoned building? And how long will this last until vehicles arrive?)

In terms of cheaper cost that might solve the manpower problem, but it doesn't solve the unit's role. IMO that would actually turn Penals from underpowered to overpowered in a fortnight, because numbers matter in this game too. The more men you can have out there, the faster you gain map control, even if the enemy's machine guns are constantly forcing a retreat; at least Osttruppen are a doctrinal call-in, and limited to one commander with no vehicle specialties.

I am also starting to think that giving Penals more of an AT role might do the trick, even though they would come earlier in a still-rather-early-game-oriented T1, and make them rather similar to Panzergrenadiers. But then that means you have a game where you either go T1 and get PTRS units for just the PTRS, or you choose a commander that has Guards and pretty much bypass this limitation.