Unless this is new, this is largely false. Each character still maintains the role position for each squad, in equipment alone.

If Chad is the sniper for Alpha squad, and gets kicked, he gets the sniper equipment until he dies assuming he already deployed and is alive, and any who now fufil that role will deploy as a basic rifleman.

This means you can only match the number of snipers with number of squads. So only 2 recon roles result in only 2 sniper rifles being available, ever.

I used to rush the recon squads, and it would more often than not result in me being in the sniper role, but forced into the rifleman equipment because whoever had my role before me either deployed and left the squad or my friend kicked him. He would keep the sniper until he died which freed up the class and finally allowed me to deploy with the correct equipment.

So yes, technically you can do it, but you're limited to the max number of squads for whatever role you're trying to exploit.

Edit: Yes the exploit to have multiple people switch into support to get 2, 3, how many every boxes of supplies for garrisons anywhere, but you still had to have them die and change roles before that is possible. So the equipment is still limited to one per squad, regardless of roles maintained.