No, it's not a "legit" complaint. It's a whine. It's part of the game, intended to be there. what, in my opinion, HiTech recognizes, is that people are whining and won't let it go.
It's simply a very much unbalanced gameplay feature. Effort and result don't match, as well as the actions necessary to redeem it at the current palyer numbers.
It worked somewhat better when it wasn't tied to the city and we had more players to cover the hQ and to resupply it in particular.
When I logged on for my quick AH fix at early noon we had 29(!) players online total, which comes down to about 5 active players per side. On a large map (Tagma). It won't get that much better for the next hours. It's toally easy to get to the HQ noe and kill it, which at these numbers can easily mean I spoend all my available time in the goon and still can't get it up.
What many US players forget is that a killed HQ has very much increased effect on gameplay during off hours. You can't just "get 10 players along and quickly resupp it", and there are often no battles at all that can easily be found 'asked for on country where the fight is".
And all that just by a single player.
A feature impacting a whole country on such a scale should be difficult and require serious effort, a big raid. Effort and consequences have to match better. Even better in my opinion would be giving it a different function.