One of the major problems that Western nations have run into in the past half century is that we’re in wars where (a) we don’t just want to kill everyone, and (b) there is no strong central control of the opposition (or at least none we want to preserve), so we’re effectively forced into the last scenario above.
This argument is only supportive of your main point “command and control by far most important” insofar future wars will also be exclusively asymmetric. That assumption, though, is problematic even today. The US isn’t spending billions of dollars on stealth fighters and bombers to fight the Taliban.
Fighting the Taliban also fulfills the purpose of funneling money to friends and supporters.