KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Not every soldier is as lucky as Pvt. Jesse Butler, who just signed his enlistment papers on his 17th birthday and will get the opportunity to fight in the same war that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks inspired.

Although Butler came into the world on a terrible day in U.S. history, he’s thanking his lucky stars today that he has the privilege of avenging that attack just like thousands of others that came before and after him.

“I’m really thankful for people like Jesse who are stepping up to serve this country at a time of war,” said Sgt. 1st Class Elon Rodriguez, his recruiter. “And in his specific case, the war is the same one he’s known his whole life.”

Butler will soon ship off to Army basic training where he’ll get physically fit and learn all kinds of skills that will serve him well in Afghanistan, which the U.S. has been fighting in since before people knew what an Apple iPod was.

(Although the “classic” Apple iPod was discontinued in 2014, the obsolete War in Afghanistan continued its production run to the present day).

Sources say it’s possible that Butler may be sent to Kandahar, where his father once served, or to Bagram, where his older brother is currently deployed.

Butler has told reporters he can’t wait to pass on his knowledge of the country and how to fight the Taliban to his own sons.

WASHINGTON — The director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency announced today the agency would be ending its pro bono research and development relationship with Google and other Silicon Valley tech firms.

Founded in 1958, DARPA spent decades conducting cutting edge research for the most difficult problems faced by the military, while working on its lesser-known secondary mission of creating marketable technologies that could be adapted for civilian use, making billionaires out of smart and socially inept twenty-somethings.

“It was something that had to be done,” said Dr. Steven H. Walker, DARPA Director. “While we have enjoyed a long, fruitful relationship with Silicon Valley, we think it is time to make a change.”

“We enjoyed watching them turn ARPANET, the brilliant communication and data sharing system we invented, into the largest repository of cat videos and porn mankind has ever seen,” said Jonathan Winters, a program manager. “And, you can imagine the pride we all felt when the Global Positioning System we designed to guide warships and nuclear armed bombers during the Cold War was turned into an app that guides drunk college students to the nearest Quiznos. But these tech guys have gone too far.”

The policy change came after a number of DARPA scientists raised ethical concerns about large tech firms such as Google and Facebook. Many critics have argued that technology firms are mostly responsible for the rise of “fake news” conspiracy theories that have spread quickly on social media platforms.

“They control 90% of the web search market, so the internet is mostly whatever they say it is. We may build cutting edge death-dealing, murder-bots, but we aren’t reading your emails or convincing your uncle that the Illuminati rigged the local school board election.”

When reached for comment, Google CEO Larry Page denied the news would have a significant impact on the company’s business, but he declined to answer further questions as he stepped into a self-driving car whose technological advances were made possible by the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge.

Still, a visibly-distraught Page immediately sent an encrypted email to the firm’s senior leadership using the Tor system developed by DARPA in 1997 to discuss their options, a company source said.

“Look, no one is happy about this,” said Walker. “But we just can’t do research and development for the military and the private sector. Google just needs to work on its own technological breakthroughs from now on.”

WASHINGTON — The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counternarcotics and Global Threats totally got on bloop and Bobby Brown when testifying about countering transnational organized crime before the House Committee on Armed Services last week, according to sources.

Thomas Alexander, who recently returned from California where he observed National Guardsmen performing counter-drug duties, floated into the District “hungry laughing” and with “potent vision,” according to a press release from the Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office.

Alexander is reportedly very concerned about the use of active-duty personnel and money in conducting counter-narcotics support activities, especially in the U.S. This comes during a review of Defense funding after 17 blazing years of constant war in the narcotics hotspots of the Middle East and South Asia.

Before testifying, Alexander allegedly started the day with a wake-and-bake at a bro’s house in Taneytown with some Jolly Green and Devil’s Lettuce, right before gnoshing an awesome breakfast of five bagels topped with powdered eggs, bacon, salsa, pancakes, melon, beetroot and whipped cream.

Then, while being driven very slowly to the Capitol by bouldered driver Army Spc. Jahmee I. Ree of the D.C. National Guard, Alexander stopped the car and bought a dro bud called 535 Funk from a kine at the intersection of 3rd and Constitution. 

Fearing a magic cancer call — also known as a urinalysis by dem stiff necks — Alexander then mixed up some black pepper, microwave popcorn and Doobie’s E-Liminate-It Magic Syrup, and passed it to himself on the left-hand side. That reportedly broke his personal security detail, who only had Greenout juice and No-Mo-Wreck pills to help walk back their gnarly fear of The Man.

A short time later, appearing before Congress at the unrighteous hour of 9 a.m. to describe Defense counterdrug requirements for the coming fiscal year, Alexander said he needed more “chess” and “sha-bang-a-bang-a” to get inside the minds of drug users. But he didn’t want any of that “snickle-fritz” from California.

When Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California’s 14th District objected, Alexander replied that “Reggie Miller” and an unidentified general he called “Sampson” never served in California. He also said that South Bay weed isn’t “loud” or “nay nay famous.”

Exhaling a massive power-cloud of Lanai Cabbage smoke, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii’s like, only the second of two whole districts, breezily quizzed the Chief on the current posture of the National Guard’s counter-drug programs. Alexander, who was by then totally lit on widdle that enhanced the upper reaches of his holy state, said that Hawaii’s bogus decriminalization laws have had no influence on overall Guard readiness or his personal state of mellow with regard to “haters” and “the pigs.”

He also said for the record, he hates funding “these bogus DoD counter-drug task forces that are the children of Babylon.” He added that they are not what DoD’s main mission is about — defending the U.S. “They’re totally all in on supporting drug law enforcement,” he said. “No brethren and sistren can tolerate that since it harshes everyone’s mellow.”

At press time, Alexander was seen telling the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy to refer to him as haile nigušu t’īsi, the Ethiopian-language translation of “Mighty King Smoke.”

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s Public Affairs Office has unveiled a new aircraft to combat dumpster fires today, according to its own press release.

Dana White, the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, personally demonstrated the Canadair CL-215 “Scooper” by flying over a roll-off, open-topped Dixie dumpster in a Pentagon parking lot, and releasing one thousand gallons of water in a single pass that extinguished all potential public relations infernos at once.

The bin, which was filled to the brim with substantiated reports of financial misconduct, validated sex scandals, and a current Space Force investigation, was left a water-logged mess that no investigator or journalist would touch, according to sources.

“That was easy,” joked White while back on the ground, pushing an annoying red button that repeated, “That was easy.” She added, “No other part of the federal government has this kind of firefighting capability.”

A twin-engine, high-wing aircraft, the Scooper is designed to react at low speed and in dangerous dumpster environments, such as those found over wrecked Navy ships in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and on U.S. Space Force bases across the solar system.

Public Affairs reportedly acquired the aircraft from Turkey in a sweetheart deal that will send scores of F-35 fighter aircraft to America’s favorite NATO ally next week, so long as Turkey promises not to detain and execute all the U.S. Air Force officers currently stationed at Incirlik Air Base.

Sources say White will soon head to Syria and then back to Central Command headquarters in Tampa with the aircraft, before its diverted toward the website Task & Purpose, which recently reported a green-on-blue attack on a U.S. Marine in Syria.

“We are always ready to fight under our motto, facta es fictus,” White said, from behind the aircraft controls.

At press time, White was continuing to refuse pleas from the California Air National Guard to contribute the Scooper to help fight its wildfires. “Our information special forces don’t have time for that,” she said.

PENTAGON — Pentagon officials say the Taliban can just have the city of Ghazni in Afghanistan since the U.S. military didn’t really want it anyway, sources confirmed today.

Days after the Taliban launched a major assault on the city of about 280,000 people, senior defense officials downplayed its significance in the overall South Asia Strategy. Although the Taliban was able to mass about 1,000 fighters and took over large portions of the city, American officials stressed it wasn’t really that important since it was 100 miles from the capital of Kabul.

“If the Taliban got in their trucks and started rolling up to Kabul, it would take them over an hour to get there,” said Gen. John Nicholson, the commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Still, American forces have assisted Afghan forces in clearing operations in the city. Officials said that so far, roughly 140 Taliban fighters had been killed, demonstrating that the U.S. and Afghans would likely retake the city as soon as the enemy body count was accurately tallied.

“Things are complicated there,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White. “But our Afghan partners are valiantly holding the line with the weapons and air support we continue to provide to them like a warm blanket.”

Officials added that Ghazni was “strategically irrelevant” in the grand scheme of the Resolute Support mission, whose goal is to support defense contractors and generals’ careers by not defeating the Taliban by, with, and through their Afghan partners.

“There are hundreds of cities in Afghanistan,” Nicholson told reporters. “I just don’t get why all of you are focused on this one.”

THE PENTAGON — Deployed service members will no longer be allowed to perform any physical activity in combat zones, according to a new Pentagon policy announced this week.

The policy change comes amid fallout from fitness tracking apps that apparently exposed the locations of bases overseas in Iraq and Syria that locals and ISIS fighters alike had absolutely no idea about. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesman stressed that the measure, which would require deployed military personnel to remain as sedentary as possible for the duration of their deployment, is a good sign for operational security.

“Clearly these personal fitness trackers worried us,” said Lt. Col. Jason Baker. “But in this type of environment where opposing military forces are unable to see our troops building outposts with American-made Hesco barriers and giant rooftop security positions with machine-guns, it is important that we remain vigilant and deny the enemy any advantage.”

Baker added that he could only say the outposts were built in undisclosed locations, the official Pentagon term for Syria.

According to defense officials, troops will be required to conduct regular physical training prior to deploying. But once overseas, individual unit commanders are to conduct regular inspections for silkie shorts and other banned physical training paraphernalia.

The Pentagon is also considering a ban on GPS in favor of maps and compasses, and is also looking into the possibility of banning watches and sunglasses, which could reflect sunlight and give away troops’ positions, in addition to uniforms, which officials may give the appearance to indigenous personnel that American military forces are operating in certain areas.

WALTHAM, Massachusetts — In the ongoing war on fiscal prudence, a new bomb from Raytheon is ready to blow up the scene, sources confirmed today.

Raytheon is set to move into the operational testing phase for the most advanced bomb to ever be developed for the United States military.

The GBU-60, nicknamed the ‘Budget Buster,’ is capable of destroying up to $3 million of taxpayer money in a single strike, almost a thousand times as destructive as the Mark 82 bomb it is set to replace.

Raytheon attributes its enhanced destructive capability to costly innovations such as space age optical and thermal imaging, a precision laser-guided navigation and steering system, and a Martian death ray.

It is also capable of carrying 1.5 million dollars in cash that it can use to lure in suspecting terrorists before incinerating both them and between 10 to 37 percent of hard-earned American paychecks.

“The GBU-60 Budget Buster incorporates all the latest technology necessary to rapidly obliterate public capital on today’s battlefield,” said Raytheon CEO Thomas A. Kennedy.

While it is still a year or two away from being ready for worldwide deployment, members of Congress are already expressing excitement at the enhanced capabilities of the GBU-60.

“This revolutionary new bomb ensures the United States military will continue to be the most destructive in the world,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “If we drop enough of these puppies, we can even annihilate an entire Treasury Department.”

The bomb is currently being developed for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which has been deemed a ‘natural pairing’ due to the F-35’s awesome power to fly past fiscal restraints and eradicate piles of cash.