@Jetex Jim: I find it quite offensive to be accused of such bias. I just try to stay objective and away from the Airbus-bashing crowd (which seems to be quite strong among the lower and middle ranks of the military, the German ones for sure). That does not mean that I have any affiliation with the company, nor that I approve of everything they make or do - I most certainly do not.
However, as I've read, the problem seems, in essence, to be one of temporary restrictions. Eurofighter have implemented some sort of a gradual guaranteed service life, if I'm getting it right. That means that, although the airframe itself is allegedly designed to last up to 12.000hrs+, they gradually extend this "warranty" first to 1500, then to 3000, then to 6000hrs. The current decision just temporarily delays the extension of this "warranty".
I guess this has to do with modern fighter aircraft having some sort of dynamic fatigue management, concentrating on the actual wear and tear of the aircraft rather than fixed flight hour limitations. I'm not an engineer, so I have some trouble understanding all the details in German, let alone explaining them in English.
While we're at it: does anyone have some information about the average airframe hours of the RAF Typhoon force? The reason for this question being that some people involved with German Eurofighters speculated that you guys might be more affected by this current restriction than we are.
At the end of the day, our most heavily used airframe just recently reached 1000hrs, making the current crisis a rather theoretical one. But since the RAF has used their Typhoons operationally, some of us thought that they may have a bigger issue with that.