I imagine within hours of a total war, space will become a highly militarized battlefield with kinetic and laser weapons knocking just about everything down as fast as it is put up.

Telecom satellites would be getting shot down in the first week, too.

Which would prevent any chance of restoring them or any space travel at all for many generations until we work out how to clear out billions of bits of rubbish flying around faster than bullets.

Elon's new constellation must be making for some fun plannig for those people. 60 new targets now, several hundred more new targets real soon now. I wonder if SpaceX and Blue Origin are launching payloads they're designed to shoot down their own payloads?

I assume sending up a comsat is more expensive than sending up explosive to destroy it.

Possibly. It's not like the military-industrial complex is known for it's cost-effective solutions though...

Given the manoeuvring requirements for the orbiting explosives, and the requirement to launch them with enough plausible deniability for it not to be obvious "there's a bunch of commercial satellite killers!" - I wonder if they could build and launch 60 of them for less than SpaceX paid to get the first 60 Starlink birds in orbit?

Actually I guess... it is sufficient to send up mines (lots of them) and wait for the satellites to hit them.

Nevertheless, this is such a terrible idea, I hope this is not the future.

Space (even low earth orbit) is BIG.

Very very big...

Yeah, but the satellites are not too maneuverable. The trajectory is mostly mechanical.

I understand that the US/NOAA only grants satellite licenses if you agree to allow the US to preempt your use of the Satellite.