The AI does indeed do all kinds of stupid stuff, but this is beyond stupid.
It should be completely obvious that it IS a bug. We all know that in the second to last patch for OP, Taldren coded fighters to shoot heavy weapons at each other. Obviously the way the code works an admin shuttle is treated as a fighter, even though it is almost completely harmless. This was an unintended side-effect of the fighter-vs-fighter patch. Stop being deliberately obtuse, you fighter-hater.
To you this may seem like a minor "feature" (since you don't want to call it a bug, which it clearly is) but it actuality it is an easy cheat to get fighters off your ass when you really need it. Needless to say some races are more badly affected by this than others; one race in particular which depends on fighters.
P.S. I'm glad that YOU feel that it is cheesy enough that YOU will not do it, but I know of at least one PBR fleet who will actually buy more admins just for purposes of exploiting this bug.