Guided ordinance substantially changed warfare. We bombed the bejeesus out of Dresden et. al. because we had no capacity for targeted bombing. Think on it - the Japanese would never have undertaken Kamakaze warfare if they had guided missiles.

The development of targeted weaponry basically birthed modern American military doctrine. Without it, you have no asymmetrical warfare. With it, I've got satellite maps, UCAVs, covert ops, standoff weaponry, the whole nine yards. As such, the conventional approach to taking a city is

1) cripple it via special forces and targeted aerial strikes

2) overrun it to take advantage of confusion

3) corral its supply lines to limit resupply

4) divide and conquer through quadrants until you've pacified the whole thing

The illustration of the paper linked is that you're never going to overrun Lagos and if you can't overrun it, you can't corral it. It doesn't matter how asymmetrical your military advantage is, you just don't have the numbers.

It isn't militarily advantageous to flatten the civilian population. In an ideal battle you leave the civilian infrastructure intact and unharmed so that you aren't left with insurgent hell. The paper argues that your choices are to dresden the fuck out of your target or relive Blackhawk Down.

And that's the real lesson here: modern military doctrine has no capacity for controlling insurgency against a megacity. "Shock and Awe" barely worked against Baghdad at at 6.3 million... which puts it at #51 on the list behind a number of probable targets in the coming years.

Call it a war, call it a police action, call it what you will - the bottom line is military strategy is likely to fail against a lot of theaters we might encounter.