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For years now, the U.S. Air Force's F-22 Raptors have been relentlessly plagued by some mystery flaw that keeps threatening to suffocate pilots. The previous best guess had something to do with glue but now the USAF is saying it's found the culprit: vests. According to Air Force Major General Charles Lyon, who presented the findings to the Pentagon, a faulty valve connected to pilots' Combat Edge upper pressure garment caused the vests to inflate too early. The vests, designed to control pilots' breathing at high altitudes and high speeds, were triggering before the extreme G-forces for which they were intended. "It's like putting a corset around your chest," Lyon said. The vests in question were also used by F-15 and F-16 pilots starting in 1992, but were abandoned in 2004 when officials decided the vests weren't helping as much as expected. F-22s, on the other hand, kept on using the vests since they go a bit higher than their predecessors. The Air...

Jul 30, 2012 11:00 AM   During a ground test on a runway in South Carolina over the weekend, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner expelled a piece of debris that landed on grass and caught fire. It's just the latest setback for the $200 million passenger megaplane of the future. Scary. The Chicago Tribune reports that the National Transportation Safety Board is in the "early stages" of investigating Saturday incident, which temporarily shut down the airport in North Charleston, South Carolina. Boeing wasted no time and is downplaying the ordeal as an innocuous sounding "engine issue." Fiery debris that shuts down airports? Yeah, no shit there's an issue. It's not even the first problem for the $200 million Dreamliner, which finally made its first commercial flight last year after being delayed for ages. The company recently discovered a fuselage problem that lead to delayed shipments, and five 787s were ground in Japan due to corrosion. Come on, guys, it's cal...