Heavily Defended Anomalies

Heavily defended anomalies have always been difficult to take down. I have always had to build a big fleet around a survey ship to destroy the defenders and survey the anomaly. In my current game, there were many heavily defended anomalies in my starting sector, but they have slowly been disappearing during the course of the game. I began to observe the many alien fleets moving about my home sector and have watched them take out all the heavily defended anomalies. NONE have them have had a survey ship within their fleets. Do you still need a survey ship to scan a heavily defended anomaly or is the game cheating?