A carrier is vulnerable, but a fixed air base is easier to find

The answer accepts that carriers can be sunk, but stresses the effort needed to locate and deliver enough cumulative damage against an escorted moving warship. Britain illustrates the fixed-base problem because its land forces lack enough Patriot-equivalent or Land Ceptor batteries to protect every airfield. An air base has a known position and can be struck repeatedly, cut off from supplies, brought under artillery fire, or captured by troops. Repairing a runway is not the same as restoring all of an air base's operational capacity, so the comparison cannot rest on one measure of damage tolerance.