Along the right hand side, a series of ship silhouettes appear, and Thuir recognises Arcadian cruiser and frigate designs. On the other side, Ked Paddah and Federation ship silhouettes appear.
There is no enemy fleet*. Yet. That's the entire point of this exercise. The Ked Peddah kept failing because not only did they have to face these fixed defenses, but also a fleet. Now the Federation has drawn the enemy out of position so the Ked Peddah are trying to take a chance against just the fixed defenses. That alone would give the Ked Peddah on their lonesome much better odds than any time previously, and they also have their fleet basically doubled by Task Force 1.
The reason to split our forces and rush this is to take out all of these boosting research station fixed defenses before the Empire can rush a reinforcement fleet here to defend. Which they *will*; it's a matter of how many of these "boosts" we can take out before we have to fight the fleet.
I feel like maybe you didn't understand what's going on, because you keep talking like there's an enemy fleet in-system right now, when that's explicitly not the case.
*They might or might not have a frigate or two, but I doubt much more or the Ked Peddah wouldn't consider the system 'undefended'.
To me that suggest that little sentence suggests that there is indeed a a sizeable fleet presence already in the system, especially since as far as I can recollect there is absolutely no mention that the Ked Paddah view the system as undefended...