Xen Asteroid "laser towers" in Savage Spur 1

[Gungnr]

Please tell me this is a bug. I am clearing Xen presence in Savage Spur for the Plot quest. Having to destroy every station is already quite the chore, but this takes the cake. A cloud of small Xen asteroid laser towers in the middle of the map.

https://imgur.com/a/jtuNOlM

It will take me hours and hours to clear this, but it adds nothing but frustration to the game experience! This isn't even difficult, but pure tedium! Why was this even put in? These asteroids didn't even play a part in the actual quest. If they were protecting some super secret Xenon vault of information, or an "achilles heel" to shut down Xenon, I can understand but this is just pointless time waste.

Each asteroid has at least 1 beam weapon on it, and has the HP of a small destroyer. So yeah not a small task.


EDIT: Playing vanilla game, no mods, all DLC, latest game version on Steam