The same could be argued for an airfield
IIRC, before they reorganised in the 1990s, the USAF worked the same way and had a base commander/wing commander airbase command structure. Base commander ran and defended the base but was not in the command chain for air operations, wing commander was of equal or greater rank and ran air operations.
Found it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stru...ir_Force#Group