@Gamerman01:
Friendly “units” include air bases and naval bases, whose presence CAN be counted.
You’re right, I should have explicitly excluded facilities, which I don’t consider units
as such, but sometimes the rules do.
You’re also right about the units-as-cargo thing, which appears on page 31 of the 2e manual if anybody is curious:
A damaged carrier can’t conduct air operations, which means that no air units may take off from or land on it. Any guest air units that were on board the carrier as cargo at the time when it was damaged are trapped onboard and can’t leave, attack, or defend until the carrier is repaired.
I can imagine the odds of that rule actually needing to be used to be on a par with a player getting permission to move units through a currently-neutral-but-will-eventually-be-hostile straight/canal.