I'm not saying you are wrong, but 30 AI planes definitely seems more laggy than 10 players with formations on my end.
It would be worth more controlled tests. I recollect that was mine and and Nef's conclusion at the time I had left the effort. Maybe he learned more. I think he was going to discuss it with HT.
I think Nef said someone had told him they saw that in a scenario with just human+slaves formations yet Nef and I never saw it in our AI only formation during extensive testing. But maybe it is a load issue that needs enough other players to manifest. If so, spacing those bomber groups out 4-5mi apart might alleviate a lot of that.
Ideally every event would be 500 live humans and no AI at all. Humans will always be more fun to kill.
At the point you guys start running BoB events with 15 players, you might have to start compromising on some of those ideals out of practicality.
[Edit] BTW, at the time Nef and I knew we would be or nearly be exceeding the capabilities.
It's not an excuse.

The plan was going to be go wild and exceed the Vne so we can find it, then in future missions start dialing it back to a level the system can handle and stop at the highest count we can get with acceptable performance.
So we expected things to start to break down at those levels. I'm not sure if Nef ever found the optimization point but it is prolly lower than were trying or space them out to lower the local load at any time. But I had moved on, and later he moved on too.

[EDIT AGAIN]
Kuya, if you wanted to start dabbling to build experience with the tech, I'd contact Nef and see if he can help you re-run some of his FE missions again. They'll get you some experience with low effort and if you wanted to take it further those might be a good template to start editing from and using as an example.
$0.02.