Huh. I was in the Air Force from 2005-2010 and I literally never saw this. I was at LSA Anaconda in Iraq too (mentioned in the article) ... must be an Army thing?
I'm not denying it exists (it's obviously a thing) but when I went through basic, they had us bring a voided check to set up direct deposit. We never had anything like this. Also I used my USAA debit card with zero issues while deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan/Kyrgyzstan. Very strange!