I don't think this is a matter of "blowing ammo." It stands to reason that getting rid of E+ will cause lots of frequent fliers to leave, pure and simple. Whether or not the economics of that work for the airline is up to them to figure out; I would assume that's the single biggest operational decision they have to make vis-a-vis retention of elites and the unified carrier, and I find it hard to believe that they'd be dumb enough to announce the end of E+ (or that they're phasing it out on domestic, or whatever) and then go back a few days later after the inevitable flyertalk freak-out.

Having said that, the ruckus over the CR-1 thing seems a little silly to me. The airline giveth, and the airline taketh away. The airline also controls your ability to spend; they can issue twice as many, and reduce the supply of available confirmable upgrades by half, and we'll only have anecdotal evidence (gathered in the midst of a merger) to try and figure out what's going on. It may very well be that somebody in an office somewhere convinced the powers that be that it would be much easier for them to reduce the supply of available confirmable seats (death by a thousand cuts in the dark, to combine two terrible analogies) than it is to reduce the supply of instruments (chopping off your head in the bright light of day.)