What if, for some reason, a country decided that it was in its best interests to deny the use of LEO to humanity.. This country launches cylinders filled with BB or smaller sized projectiles 100's of millions of them into polar and other popular orbits orbits and detonates them.... thus increacing the amount of orbital debris up there by factors of 1000's

The loss rate of satelites in orbit due to impacts would start increasing- each impact would make more debris- the location of the 100's of millions of BBs would be impossible to know- A large number of satellites would be wiped out, no one would want to put anything up when it may be swiss cheese in a year... I would guess that communication sat wouldnt be affected since they tend to be geo-synch- Launches above LEO would still be safe since the chances of being hit for a short trip through LEO would still be small...

I would like a little input from the board...
1) Is this method of attack practical? space is vast even if you restrict it to LEO
2) what would be most affected- certainly spy sats, which may be the goal of my hypothetical villain... but what are the LEO satellites used most for?

3) How would we deal with it?

Of course the pellets would eventually decay orbit and burn up but the threat would be there for many years- The ISS would be dead, how would you design this weapon and how would you deliver it? (Ie if you just dump a pile of BBs in orbit they will just stay together and not disperse, If you explode a bomb to disperse them then many will have short lived orbits.