The alternative is the mouse wheel and keybinds. Flight Simulators got this right. Roll up on the wheel to increase the value, roll back on the wheel to decrease the value. Left click to push, right click to pop (or context menu, left click to push it again to turn off).

In fact, if it was all MIDI controlled, it's just a matter of mapping the mouse scroll wheel to a midi channel.

I don't really see how that would be precise enough, the mouse wheel has a DPI of like 10 vs 400-800 for a mouse. A mouse wheel has like 25 notches in a full rotation and even MIDI CC values go from 0-127, that's 5 full rotations, that doesn't sound practical as it would be far too slow. And many parameters require much more precise control than 127 steps.

I don't play flight sims but I imagine most flight surfaces require small adjustments and the effect of those adjustments on the aircraft is naturally smoothed out by the dynamics of the plane (you're adjusting an acceleration).

I imagine the scroll wheel is not suitable for dogfighting.

Almost all DAWs I've used allow you to use the mouse wheel while clicking to increase/decrease the value on a knob.