No. The topic is AH fighter firepower comparison - that's level 0 of abstraction. If Williams' formulation matches the AH hangar data to negligible difference, it's no more excessively theoretical than the very topic itself is. It's as good a baseline as any to build on for any more practical, concrete extrapolations on how AH fighters compare in firepower. In fact, it's better, because it gives us a clue (a confirmation) as to how things are modeled in AH, as opposed to extrapolating firepower against planes from firepower against buildings. We see that the Williams figures are likely "good enough" to build a z-score from. You wanted to reject it apparently without even looking at the data. Purely on principle.
As far as I can tell, we can now build a couple of more specific charts, e.g. z-score against a target flying at zero relative velocity and short, medium, and long range. Maybe make it a 3D bar chart with Z-Score, Range (three sets), and ambient speed, as dimensions.