Except he's talking about preventing newly researched equipment from going to an already equipped division. If a division is equipped with Eq I, and then he researches Eq !!, he should be able to modify the templet to only use Eq I, and it should not be replaced. I will admit that I have not actually tested this, but it should work this way. Then again, things don't always work the way they should in PDX games.
There is checkbox 'use new equipment' - after deselecting it, newly researched equipment and produced should not be heading out to said division templates.