Possibly damage, but with fighters that's going to be generally negligible (and might be in there anyway)
I personally dislike fighter/bomber shockwaves too, since they weren't in retail (Although Volition had the ability to put them in), some mods, such as Derelict, have used them as a 'special effect' for special fighter explosions - and I think they were used in FS1 to that effect too, but I'm not sure. And finally they just seem to cross the line of making things look good, and just adding effects because we can.
My ideal situation would be to have the fighter shockwaves as an optional patch in the wiki, possibly with other patches that are along similar lines...with modular tables it's relatively easy. Call it something like "mp_fshcokwaves.vp" and link to it from the SCP site and Getting Started guides. That way I don't have to deal with people griping about them or for them every month.