I hate to be a killjoy, but I think I'd rather have something like XCOM's air combat, with just the little window that pops up. Abstracted a bit, but it tells you everything you need to know (how fast are we going, how far away is the target, which of my weapons are in range, how effective is my attack?). It also let you just shadow the UFO until more interceptors showed up, so you could gang up on particularly tough ufos.
In the game, these UFOs are hundreds of km away and are moving at speeds beyond 1000 km/ hr. No camera could show you the whole battle, every aircraft would be fast-moving specks tremendous distances away from each other at high altitude. Really, there isn't much to see there, I'd hate to see some corny Starcraft or Galciv type air combat in an otherwise gritty, realistic game. Or the UFO interception happens right over the obscure town I live in, I expect to see how house, not just some green and hills and stuff. I also don't imagine all the aircraft fighting anywhere close to the ground to see anything anyways, they'd be way up in the stratosphere and everything, with the alien craft and interceptors being unaerodynamic bricks and all.
If you want to use the 3d models, then have each aircraft shown by it's self in it's own little window (along with a menu with all the data on it, it's weapons, distances to the target, damage, ect) with clouds and whatnot rushing by it. Maybe don't have a top-down camera angle so you don't have to represent the ground. Blue skies, dusky/ dawn night. So the 3d model, with swoopy camera angles with blue, orange, purple or red or black in the background, with clouds.
Just a thought, the whole 3d modeling landscape idea thing is still better then the interception combat the way it works now, which really does need improvement.
