Re: what is the purpose of these
Engineers do stuff for reasons, and usually under great duress, so it wouldn't be there if it wasn't "necessary".
Having said that, maybe it was added to meet some long term durability requirement which you don't care about, or to cover some 99%tile customer which you are not. So you could leave it off and see what happens.
In this case I'd probably build it back up just to be sure, and to be done with it.
K
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