Good idea, if it can be done that way. Seems there's an agreement in

1. a skill-based delay in the re-acquisitioning of targets (which weakens the AI);
2. better AI shooting at non-evading targets (which strengthens the AI);
3. an evasive AI which makes it more difficult to overrun AI squads (optional).

I've been asking for something like this for years. Mission/Campaign builders should be able to set the level of AI aggressiveness in both FMB and QMB, for both offline online missions.

There are times when you want the AI to be insanely aggressive - like in a QMB fighter sweep mission or online dogfight server. But, there are also times when you want the AI to be cautious, such as during many historical campaigns.

It seems the AI perform a little more realistic if you don't set a target.
Example: I want a group of zeroes to intercept a flight of SBDs. If I set the zeroes waypoint to the sbds, and set the SBDs as the target, the zeroes will stop at nothing, and follow the SBDs to the end of the world, unroll they are all shot down or the zeroes are all shot down.

Now if I just set the waypoints close together, but do not assign the SBDs as the target, the zeroes will still attack the SBDs while close, but will not follow and hunt the remainder down once the SBDs are away from that particular waypoint.

Interesting observations. Could you perhaps figure out how close the Zeros have to be to the SBDs to attack them without any scripted order to do so? Probably this is the range where combat AI is activated in any case, irrespective of the mission script. Learning this threshold would open up new perspectives for mission and campaign design. :)

I can confirm the observation of Marabekm.

Regarding the distance between attacking a/c and targets - I'm afraid it "depends" and each mission requires some fine tuning and testing. This is at least my impression after creating some missions in CUP/now BAT. (It was based on 4.12, don't know if 4.13 is different in that respect).
Another lesson I learned - randomness does exist. When play the same mission several times and then watch tracks I see that AI behaviour can be strikingly different which leads to various outcome. At least in well balanced scenarios where neither side has decisive advantage at the start.

I'm unsure at how close they have to be. Usually I just overlap the waypoints and try and make sure the red and blue get to the same point at the same time.
On the down side, I have not been able to make this work with the escort fighters. They drop their tanks like they want to engage, but never do and just continue flying like normal, while the friendly bombers get killed right below.

Probably they will engage if timings and/or positions are slightly changed.