Can you say same thing for B-2 and F/A-117 ??? Those planes are the pure product of stealth technology and their numbers are kept to low. But that didn't help to develop faster and cheaper the F-22 program.
Sorry but IMHO the F-22 is a fiasco and they keep it just to keep the election promises. And yes the numbers are all.
One plane no matter how good it is can't cover the entire air space on its own, if you want total domination of the sky over battlefieled then you have to outnumber the adversary.
WW2 showed you this. Germans had better planes but they lost the war to the allies because they were outnumbered. Russinas understood that long time ago and now they are building the planes that can be built quickly and that are reliable (well they still have improvements to make in electronics).
Imagine the following situation. You have one squadron of F-22 against 3 sqds of Su-27. The F-22s will be able to wipe out at least two sqd of Su-27 during sinlge engagement but what will happen when they meet the third sqd of Su-27 ???
It will be their turn to get wiped out. And when you consider figures, one F-22 sqd costs much more than 2 Su-27 sqds. Reality is crude but that is the reality.
Same thing goes for Rafale on french side. That plane is much more expensive than a single Su-27 or Mig-29.