I applaud progress. But this seems to be a somewhat underwhelming feature for established units who have no problem finding Squads....only trouble syncing the collective efforts of those Squads into the same battle...and I am speaking specifically about Faction Warfare.

That needs to be the next step up the Squad Chain. Either full 16-player Squads or the ability to access the Team menu prior to deployment and populate it so all players enter the match together.

There are also a new tutorial system being released for new players which is really the bread and butter of 1.5 since vehicles were pushed back to 1.6.

didn't wolfman or another dev say that weapons would be part of 1.5?
as seen: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1280383#post1280383

Lack of new content is hard to deal with, but we have some new weapons on the horizon. It should do the trick untill all the core is right, which is more important imo. I can understand and I support the current direction of development.

Not to mention you cannot balance weapons when half of them as missing from the game.

I don't think they've been "wasting" their time on core gameply. I think they have been successful fixing most of the core gameplay. Aiming et al. The major new content blocks would be nice at this point (flesh out racial suits, weapons, vehicles) ... i can't wait to see this game in a year when all of that fleshing out is done and they can start work on things like EvE link, economics, PvE, etc.