Okay, this guy is just the utter suck right now. He still can't personally kill anything, he's still the single, fragile and super expensive (50 MU really?) platform that he is, and being an 'offensive' officer he just utterly fails at it.
Why does he suck, you ask? Well for the following reason:
1. His weapon - He has a nerfed Thompson SMG that has higher reload and cooldown than the normal SMG, which prevents him from really killing and thus earning any sort of vet.
2. His 'special' offmap - You pay 50 MU for basically a one man smoke mortar that is highly fragile (one shot by tanks) and cannot be remanned. For an offensive ability, it literally sucks. He needs to have a flying bombing run or off-map (being US infantry and their love for artillery) to effectively support an infantry force and pose a moderate threat to tanks and vehicles.
3. Aura - Nothing on his aura really gives the soldiers he runs with anything useful for 'assaulting'. Currently its a suppression resist and a 15% accuracy bonus... underwhelming when using assault troops (flamers which have no accuracy and SMGs which just fire enough that its not like a single shot weapon and where every shot matters). It helps the bazooka a little and to my knowledge from what I know before is that his aura does NOT affect crewed weapons (such as ATGs, mortars, howitzers, etc).
4. Pool cost - Really, two for him? Rangers are 4 and he's a single man that barely adds anything to the field other than a minor accuracy buff and taking 2 of em is like putting a whole ranger squad onto the field. It's like the issue with Commandoes when they were taking LTs (before when they were 3-4) in addition to elite infantry (also being 3-4).
Ways to fix him (thru all of a mix of the bottom suggestions):
1. Adjust his pool - Make him pull from the support pool instead of Infantry, which is already tapped hard enough as is. He's clearly not designed to 'solo' anything and shouldn't be taking up valuable pool from the bread and butter pool that is the infantry backbone.
2. Change his weapon - Give him a real SMG, or give him back his pistol if he's not to have an offensive off-map. Axis officers can be used to decrew and rape support teams, while an American Officer has no hope of even killing an almost dead vanilla volks squad that is almost dead without being killed himself.
3. Aura - For an 'offensive' officer, he needs to provide something like the captain does for Brits. Something either more HP, more raw damage, or something like an less incoming accuracy to reflect his leadership skills as 'keeping men alive'.
4. Change his off-map - I don't know how many times he's got to be nerfed. He had the very useful bombing run, which was then replaced with the suicide Inspired Assault which increased his dmg and his escorts but made the already fragile rifleman turn into wet paper... and now he only gets smoke? And I've used it against the dreaded 'light AT HT' and that thing can still focus fire THROUGH the smoke and pick off your infantry! Keep with the theme of US Infantry and just make it a more accurate 105mm support barrage, US Infantry is the people all about artillery, afterall (for the US faction).
5. Make him survivable - It was discussed he was suppose to have bodyguards so it was easier to keep him alive, and somehow this disappeared. Compared to all the other officers, this makes him the 'worst' or weakest of the lot.
For a T2 doctrine choice, he is totally not worth the purchase and I really regret purchasing him and locking up a US infantry choice, which I think when compared to other doctrines has far less points in their pool (Being their Elite and heal both eat up 2 points out of 8, then if you want some decent artillery that isn't the crap US mortar, you got to spend another point for howizter... which leaves 5 points to get 1 tier 2 and tier 3 unlock...). Make him worth his choice, please.
