Problem is there's no way to accurately judge range for most people. Historically that's what the gun sights were used to help do, but as I indicated in a thread on aircraft/vehicles not all aircraft's sights are the correct size to use the historical sight for judging range (*cough*F4Us*cough*).
Historically, real life pilots misjudged the distance quite frequently even with gunsights in place. Therefore, the only sure distance was a distance where you could see the enemy plane so large in front of you, that it couldn't be any more than 150~200m out tops. Hence the maxim,
"get in close, then closer". Anything further out than that was pure guess work with only a vague reference info provided by the gunsight, one's own identification training, and one's own experience and feel. We do not need an "accurate range", since there was no such thing as an "accurate range".
If you are not sure of the range in the game, then all you have to do is just close in enough so you are confident that your bullets will hit the mark without having to compensate for range. As it is, all the distance counter does in the game is just promote more spraying and long range sniping.
We already have the "+/-" closure rate indicator, so why in the world we need a separate range counter in 200yd ticks, is beyond me.