Its seems to be the highest ranked units are always killed in the barracks. It has always been my highest rank unit for a unit type that gets killed.

lost another gunship. No I do not dashboard. I did have a game that froze in the starting screen, but had no gunships deploying. My deployment order is even set for lowest to highest.

And Ubisoft Shanghai still does not know there was a server outage on Tuesday for Xbox ToW.

Not that you would likely notice the lowest ranked units dissapearing ...

Did the game you froze on continue for other players? (If you were playing 2v2 or 4v4, and know the other teammates). I believe AI can deploy highest to lowest, even if you have set the option the other way around (not scientifically tested this, just from what I have seen from playing with friends, who do deploy from the back, freezing & hence dropping out of games).

Have you quit out of a unit selection screen (before the game starts) - some people are not aware that this can lose your units too, even if you and your teammate/s all leave at this point. I learnt the hard way, where me & a friend quit at unit selection to go join a friend who had just come online, hoping that, as the game hadn't started we would be ok ... nope definately lost units to it.