''A Bundeswehr spokesperson told Der Spiegel that the "daily actual availability" of the Eurofighter right now is better than last year.'' So this has been going on for a year!?
Well, there's several issues.
The number of aircraft that are ready to fly is "above 39" (that's where the "better than last year" quote is coming from).
The number of "combat ready" jets is calculated by the Spiegel by the number of available missiles that haven't expired shelf life; that's 16 AMRAAMs left, so four jets could be equipped with four missiles each, hence the headline "only four jets are combat ready".
Like I wrote before (and which has been elaborated at the link that you don't dare to click), this is a compounded problem insofar as the AMRAAM has been been maintained because it was scheduled to be replaced by the purchase of the IRIS-T missile. However, that program has experienced delays, so we're now in a situation where the old missile is effectively gone but the new one isn't yet in stock. Once that this problem has been rectified, the number of "combat ready" jets per Spiegel calculation will jump to at least 40, (hopefully more). Still not great, I admit, but maybe not quite to shockingly bad either.