The article misses the most important point.
The lifetime of satellites, particularly recon satellites, is determined NOT buy solar panel degradation or even gamma particle impacts on memory.
Rather, it is fuel for the attitude thrusters. They correct for gravity (lunar) perturbations and solar wind perturbations. This is what keeps the cameras precisely pointed.
If you can refuel the thrusters in space, that is one hell of a lot of launch requirement for replacements that reduces.
Yes it does, but its not what you wrote.
Being able to conduct RPO (rendezvous and prox ops) and docking is a required skill if you want to go up and do mischievous activities to other nations assets.
Most satellites have design life between 5 and 15 years and the fuel to do that, for the most part, is not a large mass issue. This is certainly the case in GEO. And most satellites would be obsolete 15 years after launch, which means 18-20 years after design and hardware build. The refueling case is largely an outlier.