It's extremely useful when you are vastly outnumbered in the opposing population and much of the ground forces would rather desert than execute their own people. See Syria.

The only reason it worked in Syria is because of Foreign support. And because a large faction of the population decided that actually they were fine with Assad.

If you were vastly outnumbered and tried to wage war against your population they can just strike. And just like that all your advanced weapons won't be able to be maintained.

If you want to force people to work on your factories, bombs won't be very useful, but guns will be.