The development cost of the Sukhoi PAK FA is around $8 billion. That of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is estimated at $1.5 trillion right now (and may climb to $2.5 trillion in the future). And it seems that PAK FA is superior when compared to the F-35. So my question is, when the Russians can produce stealth fighters at one-hundredth of the cost when compared to the Americans, what prevented the NATO from purchasing the PAK FA, rather than wasting trillions of USD in to the F-35 program?
The unit cost of the F-35B plane is said to cost about $123M and they have spent close to $1.508 Trillion and they have so far manufactured about 231 units and the contract will run up to 2070. Even though its costly, i think its too late to abandon the project due to the amount of money spent on it and i really doubt NATO will purchase fighter jets from the Russians which individual unit cost about $50 M. Way cheaper than the F-35.