[lumost]

For the price of the f-35 a defensible satellite installation could be placed in orbits that would be difficult to shoot down.

There is nothing stopping a satellite from maneuvering out of the way of an incoming missle, or for it deploying counter measures.

Satellites can be launched on arbitrarily large rocket boosters with an arbitrary number of in orbit assembly/refueling flights. Anti satellite missiles require that the missile can be deployed to a useful location that can’t be immediately disabled.

[nradov]

There is no such thing as a defensible satellite installation. The only way to make a satellite really difficult to shoot down is to put it in a high orbit, but that makes it less useful for reconnaissance. While launch costs have come down slightly, the total cost for building and launching a large military satellite remains far higher than an F-35. Even large satellites carry very little maneuvering fuel and have small thrusters which don't allow for effective evasive maneuvers. Adding more fuel and larger thrusters would drastically increase costs and reduce the mass available for useful payloads. And that's not even the biggest problem. Satellites lack the sensors necessary to detect when they are under attack. It's just not practical to load them up with multiple radars and IRST sensors that would be necessary to detect an incoming antisatellite weapon.

So in short your idea won't work in the real world.