This seems to occur when friendly stations spawn too close to hostiles.

The station's ships will attack and destroy the hostile station, and keep attacking it after it's dead.

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xephyr 18 Feb 2016:

Looks like this isn't limited to friendlies, either - I found some ares ships attacking a dead Kobol camp.

relanat 19 Feb 2016:

Must be fairly common. I got this as well. Nearest friendly station to the dead Charon Stronghold was 126 ls away.

nms 4 Mar 2016:

Got a save file demonstrating this: http://ministry.kronosaur.com/record.hexm?id=54420

assumedpseudonym 22 May 2016:

 This is probably a related issue: Go annoy a station’s guards without destroying them, then head somewhere else in the system. After they get back to the station, they’ll turn around and go look for you again. Station guards attacking dead stations follow the same pattern: After destroying the station, they dock at their parent station before returning to pound on the wreckage.

george moromisato 23 Jun 2016:

Fixed in 1.7 Alpha 2. Thank you!