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Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent side
attempts to win a war by wearing down its enemy to the point of collapse
through continuous losses in personnel and materiel. The war will usually be
won by the side with greater such resources. The word attrition comes from the
Latin root atterere to rub against, similar to the "grinding down" of
the opponent's forces in attrition warfare.
Strategic considerations:
Military theorists and strategists like Sun Tzu have viewed attrition warfare
as something to be avoided. In the sense that attrition warfare represents an
attempt to grind down an opponent through superior numbers, it represents the
opposite of the usual principles of war, where one attempts to achieve decisive
victories by using minimal necessary resources and in minimal amount of time,
through maneuver, concentration of force, surprise, and the like. On the other
hand, a side which perceives itself to be at a marked disadvantage in maneuver
warfare or unit tactics may deliberately seek out attrition warfare to
neutralize its opponent's advantages. If the sides are nearly evenly matched,
the outcome of a war of attrition is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory.
The difference between war of attrition and other forms of war is somewhat
artificial, since war always contains an element of attrition. However, one can
be said to pursue a strategy of attrition when one makes it the main goal to
cause gradual attrition to the opponent eventually amounting to unacceptable or
unsustainable levels for the opponent while limiting one's own gradual losses
to acceptable and sustainable levels. This should be seen as opposed to other
main goals such as the conquest of some resource or territory or an attempt to
cause the enemy great losses in a single stroke (e.g. by encirclement and
capture). Historically, attritional methods are tried when other methods have
failed or are obviously not feasible. Typically, when attritional methods have
worn down the enemy sufficiently to make other methods feasible, attritional
methods are abandoned in favor of other strategies. In World War I,
improvements in firepower but not communications and mobility forced military
commanders to rely on attrition, with terrible loss of life. Attritional
methods are in themselves usually sufficient to cause a nation to give up a
non-vital ambition, but other methods are generally necessary to achieve
unconditional surrender. History It is often argued that the best-known example
of attrition warfare was during World War I on the Western Front. Both military
forces found themselves in static defensive positions in trenches running from
Switzerland to the English Channel. For years, without any opportunity for
maneuvers, the only way the commanders thought they could defeat the enemy was
to repeatedly attack head on, to grind the other down. Attritional warfare in
World War I has been shown by historians such as Hew Strachan to have been used
as a post hoc excuse for failed offensives. Erich von Falkenhayn later claimed
that his tactics at Verdun were designed not to take the city, but rather to
destroy the French Army in its defense. In practice the German Offensive was
intended to go as far as possible and had no obvious design to minimize German
casualties and maximize French casualties. Attrition was therefore used later
in the battle to shift the focus away from Falkenhayn's tactical failure,
rather than a goal of the battle itself.
Attrition to the enemy was easy to assert and difficult to refute, and thus may
have been a convenient face-saving exercise in the wake of many indecisive
battles. It is in many cases hard to see the logic of warfare by attrition
because of the obvious uncertainty of the level of damage to the enemy, and of
the damage that the attacking force may sustain to its own limited and
expensive resources, while trying to achieve that damage. That is not to say
that a general will not be prepared to sustain high casualties while trying to
reach an objective. An example in which one side used attrition warfare to
neutralize the other side's advantage in maneuverability and unit tactics
occurred during the latter part of the American Civil War, when Ulysses S.
Grant pushed the Confederate Army continually, in spite of losses, confident
that the Union's supplies and manpower would overwhelm the Confederacy even if
the casualty ratio was unfavorable; this indeed proved to be the case.
Other examples:
The "delaying" tactics of Quintus Fabius Maximus
"Cunctator" against Hannibal Barca during the Second Punic War.
Battle of Actium of 31 BC during the Roman civil wars The Hungarian resistance
against the Mongols 1241–1242 The Ð?i Empire (now known as Vietnam),
three repulsions of Kublai Khan (the grandson of Genghis Khan and the last Khan
of the Mongol Empire) in 1258, 1285 and 1288 The American strategy during the
American Revolutionary War The French invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte
in 1812 Trench warfare in the American Civil War, notably the Siege of
Petersburg Trench warfare in World War I, including the Battle of the Somme
(1916), the Battle of Verdun and many others Tonnage war in the Atlantic and
Pacific during World War II The Air battle for Great Britain in World War II
after the bombing of London Static battles in World War II, including Soviet
urban defense during the Battle of Stalingrad Battles of Rzhev (1942–1943)
The final two years of the Korean War The Vietnam War (Body count) The
"Long War" during the Provisional IRA's armed campaign against the
British Army during the Troubles. The Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition from
1967–1970. The Soviet war in Afghanistan
The later phases of the Iran–Iraq War The Spanish Civil War
(1936–1939) The War in Afghanistan (2001–present) Sri Lankan
military's crushing of LTTE (2005–2009) The 2011 Libyan civil war is
arguably an example of attrition warfare. The Mexican Drug War, where the
Mexican government seeks to fatally weaken the cartels.
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