There's definite wiggle-room there, yeah. Like "it'd allow them to travel faster and further than what the Kree have now", but they didn't bother spending any time in a scripting sense to make that clear. Just felt really, really ill-conceived. Like you say, if they'd spelled it out, a couple of lines detailing it and not making it so open to interpretation, you might have been able to get on board with the importance more.
As it stands though, it's just like "they can already travel interstellar, not just orbital - they seem 500 years or so more advanced than humans, and not really any less than anything we see in Guardians with the Xandar types. They're advanced enough militarily to combat the Kree, even if they're losing overall. Buuuuuut...plot armor, whoo."