[Hawkeye]

Even if there is a reason for the air intakes, you kinda wonder what good it'll do for something that's nuclear powered though XD But then since these are all originally based on the Tomcat, it would be strange not to have them. Gotta continue the tradition.

Well I think the main reason is because the fighters arn't just space fighters, they were designed to be mainly used in an atmosphere originally. If they were designed to be space fighters why did they include Wings and a Rudder hun? No use what so ever... in a space enviroment

They might be Nuclear powered, but think for a minute... How do Nuke subs move? The Nuclear engine produceds the energy to turn the shaft which turns the sub propeller, It might be the same with the Fighter with the nuclear powerplant turning the Tuberjet blades....
I see that happening because you really don't want to dump loads of radiation particals into an atmostphere, but then what happens when there no atmosphere in space for that to work.... So it doe seem to be redundent there, maybe then the engine switch over to jumping the Radiation directly into space to produce the thrust needed to move the craft....