India, May 12 -- How a 27-year-old bug collapsed the security paradigm?

In the dawn of May 1940, the world's military elite shared a singular, unshakable consensus: the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael was the most impregnable defensive structure ever engineered. It was a sprawling masterpiece of concrete, steel, and artillery, meticulously designed to withstand any imaginable siege for months. Yet, the pride of European defense fell in exactly fifteen minutes.

It was not pulverised by a massive, overwhelming army, but dismantled by a handful of paratroopers utilising a terrifyingly new, classified technology: the shaped charge. The defenders were structurally prepared for a grueling war of attrition; they were entirely erased by a war of...