I have trouble seeing use-cases for newly developed manned combat aircraft.
Starlink(-like) communication has a low enough latency (25 and 60 ms) and is nearly unjammable. There are too many satellites to destroy, unless the enemy resorts to outright Kesslerization. In the rare cases where the communication is dropped, some fallback programming / AI can at least return it home.
Having a person in the plane does make shooting it down (or not shooting it down) much more meaningful, which can be important. For example in the South China sea, flying a manned aircraft around is a much stronger statement than flying a drone around.
And to me it still seems possible that someone could come up with some jamming technology that prevents drones from communicating with satellites or base stations - and if someone does, you don't want your entire air force to be disabled.
1 - Is China capable of taking down 5000 satellites, and can they do it quickly enough to matter?
2 - Can China take out the satellites faster than they can be replaced?
3 - If a "major" conflict erupts that calls for the destruction of Starlink (et al.), some of the first "strikes" by the other side will be to reduce China's ability to take out satellites. Do they have the redundant capability to take out Satellites continually?
The U.S. government, specifically the Pentagon, has poured so much money into Starlink that they likely already have contingency plans to deal with this exact scenario.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36041845