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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?
It's simple....
201 F35 built....0 PAK FA flying.
You see where the 1/100 comes from?
More than 200 F-35 have been built. But how many are operational? Ever since the first flight, a lot of bugs and operational issues are being uncovered everyday. It will take them another 10 years to make the F-35 fully functional.
I wonder if the PAK FA has sensor fusion and that DAS technology.. The problem with the F-35 is that it has another variant for each of the branches of the US armed forces making it difficult to develop... And they paralled the testing and design phase with early production so they find a lot of bugs after production.
