Chaser,
I can answer you because years ago I flew in a game that did just what you want,every plane had a hit "bubble" and if you flew to close and touched the "bubble" you both took damage and went down. Now the problems came as others would fly close enough to damage you when you were fighting their "buddy".
Another issue was the"bubble" size changed with latency and you never knew how close was too close and could ram someone from behind yet they were just in firing range. So I think I'd rather have what we have ingame,like Wiley said the lesser of 2 evils! Maybe someday there will be no lag,then HTC can revisit the CM.