The vet accuracy bonus of Volks is lower than those of Assault Grenadiers, their RA with vet is far worse, they don't have sprint, they can't upgrade to 6 men and the MP40 upgrade costs munitions.
Why would I want handicapped Assault Grenadiers again?
++ G43's have the highest moving dps in the game at ~90%, compared to ~50% of STG44's.
++ G43's get better long range dps than STG44's, starting at 27 range.
+ Panzergrenadiers get 20% bonus sight with G43's, giving them equal sight to Pioneers (42).
+ Panzergrenadiers get free interrogation once upgraded.
-- G43's have noticably less close and midrange damage than STG44's.
- STG44's do more scatter damage (a hidden dps value) and have shorter aimtime, so the G43 might comparably be worse than the dps charts would suggest.
- STG44's benefit more of the bonus accuracy with vet, widening the dps gap between ranges 0-27 and narrowing the gap between ranges 27-35, thus actually moving the dps intersection to 28 range.
- STG44's do far more damage against light vehicles.
- You can't upgrade Schrecks anymore once you've upgraded G43's.
- The upgrade costs 25 munitions.
I personally don't find the upgrade worth it. G43 pgrens are nowhere near as effective as LMG Grens at long range and the high moving dps is hard to fully utilize with how vulnerable Pgrens are. Your mileage may vary however, I know Jae43 uses the upgrade quite extensively with T1 skip. The earlier timing of Pgrens, their new vet ability and the decreased cost of the upgrade have certainly helped this strategy.
I noticed that the Wehrmacht Stuka Close Air Support Doctrine single pass recon gave abysmal sight and moved a lot quicker than usual. It resembled the stuka smoke pot drop without the smoke that also gives a of bit vision during the pass. The CAS Doctrine ability so far has been its own separate ability so I suspect a minor mix up.
On a sidenote: why didn't the balance team just use the smoke reconnaissance run of Luftwaffe for the new OKW commander's smoke bombs? Tools seem to indicate they're the same ability anyway (only difference is recharge time of 45 seconds vs 30).
Wouldn't be surprised if the "new" smoke ability somehow caused the bug you described.