And this, actually, is why those "hundred-million-dollar boondoggle" fighter jets are really so expensive: they're extremely fancy routers, connecting the (cheaper) planes around them into redundant mesh networks (well, redundant when you have more than one fancy plane) and connecting that mesh network to ground control with redundant-per-fancy-plane ground relays/satellite uplinks over several different physical media (broadcast RF, directed microwave, some kind of laser, etc.)
Since at least one of the fancy planes is pretty much guaranteed to stay connected to its flight, you can—if you have the room—stick your CIC in there, rather than on the ground. Then, rather than remote-controlling your fighters from the ground, you can remote-control your fighters from another fighter. Which means that now you only need one crew to pilot, say, 8 aircraft. (Well, for now, doctrine would still require humans in the cockpits of the subordinate aircraft; you just don't need to train them nearly as much on how to execute precise group maneuvers. Like driverless cars on highways!)
This is oddly easier in the air (because aerial maneuvers are something fighters need to do as a unit); the hard part is takeoff and landing, because there's not enough hands in an aerial CIC to pilot all the planes up and down. So you want these hypothetical subordinate drone fighters to be able to be passed off automatically between aerial CIC and ground control. (It's convenient if they mostly launch and park themselves, because you then need less ground-control staff on your aircraft carrier or whatever, but it's important that they can be passed off to humans on the ground when necessary.)