Whether or not it's a good strategy for either companies or the government, this particular case involved randomly firing a bunch of folks who build and maintain nuclear weapons and then almost immediately trying to un-fire them. There wasn't enough time to see if anything broke (not that you'd see that with nuclear weapons until it was way, way too late) but now you've managed to piss off a bunch of people who are likely only going to come back long enough to find a new job, if they come back at all, and you've probably also damaged your ability to retain even the people you didn't fire or attract new prospective employees. It's basically all damage with zero value and it certainly isn't going to fix any performance management problems.

I think it's a questionable strategy anyways, especially when applied to government, but carrying out the strategy in such a ham-fisted way seems unlikely to be the secret to making it successful.