After building app with
ionic cordova build android --prod --release
Then jarsign and zipalign
I am able to debug the resulting APK in an emulator using Chrome Dev Tools just like is possible for a debug app.
I added the below to config.xml but it still does not help
<edit-config file="app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml" mode="merge" target="/manifest/application" xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<application android:debuggable="false" />
</edit-config>