I like the aerodynamic look...in a hot dogfight, you're gonna want to be able to pursue a ship/fighter that is trying to get away from you, and as we've all seen, the most common method of eluding pursuit is to drop into the atmosphere of a nearby planet. Maybe, instead of being a ship based fighter, this is more of a planet based fighter, used for defense. Therefore, it would be launched in atmosphre. Either way though, I think that our future fighters and ships will incorporate atmospheric capability...it's human nature to want to be able to land that sucker if you're in trouble.