Each F-35 costs about $100M now. When you want to compare the entire project scope, you should also account for how many planes have been planned to build. Because that $1.5T number includes purchases and lifetime expenses. About 3000 planes and decades of use.

Strictly measuring the R&D places the program at $50B. A price tag that includes making virtually 3 kinds of planes for more than a dozen operators.

So when you say its cost $1.5T, then try to point to alternatives, I'd have to ask, which other alternative planes have had 3000 constructed and then operated over the course of its life in the past 2 decades? What exactly are you trying to compare that $1.5T number to?

Do you want to compare this to the Rafale, of which there are only 150?

To use a metaphor:

I went out and bought 10 bags of apples for $100, but that guy only needed to spend $10 for his bag of oranges.

Sorry, but why are you asking?