Attrition Warfare: The Science and Strategy of Sustained Combat

By Fouad Sabry

What is Attrition Warfare

Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel, materiel, and morale. The word attrition comes from the Latin root atterere, meaning "to rub against", similar to the "grinding down" of the opponent's forces in attrition warfare.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Attrition warfare

Chapter 2: Battle

Chapter 3: List of military tactics

Chapter 4: On War

Chapter 5: Battle of Verdun

Chapter 6: Battle of the Somme

Chapter 7: Military strategy

Chapter 8: Verdun

Chapter 9: Schlieffen Plan

Chapter 10: Erich von Falkenhayn

(II) Answering the public top questions about attrition warfare.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Attrition Warfare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: May 27, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Attrition warfare

A military tactic known as attrition warfare entails hostile attempts to defeat an adversary by wearing him down to the brink of collapse through ongoing losses of troops and material.

By depleting an opponent's military resources through any methods, such as guerilla warfare, people's war, scorched earth tactics, and all types of engagements aside from a final battle, attrition warfare aims to weaken an adversary's capacity to wage war. However, Russia defeated Napoleon in 1812 by using attrition warfare. Attritional tactics are frequently supplemented or even abandoned by other techniques when they have worn the enemy down to the point where alternative tactics are practical. Military leaders on both sides of World War I relied ineffectively on attrition warfare, which led to losses without a tactical advantage.

Since even a single fight typically incorporates an element of attrition, the distinction between a war of attrition and other types of war is rather arbitrary. When one's primary objective is to cause the opponent's incremental losses to eventually reach intolerable or unsustainable levels while keeping one's own gradual losses to acceptable and manageable levels, one is said to be pursuing an attrition strategy. That should be viewed in contrast to other primary objectives like capturing a resource or territory or attempting to drastically reduce the enemy's strength all at once (such as by encirclement and capture). Additionally, attrition warfare seeks to make the conflict more uncomfortable for the enemy.

A prime example of attrition warfare interfering with Napoleon's military logistics and ending the war without a major combat is the French invasion of Russia.

Charles Joseph Minard produced one of the best illustrations of Russian attrition warfare tactics.

It shows the steady decrease of the number of soldiers of the French Grande Armée during the course of the war.

The Western Front in World War I may be the most famous instance of attrition warfare, and as a result, attrition tactics were used in the struggle.

Between June 1915 and November 1917, soldiers on the Italian Front engaged in a series of attrition fights along the Isonzo River.

Hew Strachan and other historians have demonstrated how World War I's attritional warfare was utilized as a post hoc ergo propter hoc justification for unsuccessful offensives. Sources from the modern era dispute Strachan's assertion. Attritional warfare was the initial combat plan, not the Christmas Memorandum, which was created after the conflict.

During the latter stages of the American Civil War, Union general Ulysses S. Grant repeatedly tried to force the Army of Northern Virginia into a decisive engagement in the open but was thwarted by Robert E. Lee's quick repositioning and refortification. This is an example of attritional warfare being accidentally entered into without intent. As a result, the Army of the Potomac was compelled to attempt to remove its counterpart on multiple times by launching direct attacks upon strongholds.

Despite the fact that these did not result in the breakthrough Grant had hoped for and the Union suffered more fatalities overall as a result, the Union was better able to resupply its forces, and the Confederacy started suffering more casualties per unit than it could handle. The Army of Northern Virginia was unable to conduct a successful counterattack against a portion of the Union army by the time Grant finally drove Lee into an open confrontation at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, and as a result, it capitulated.

Darius I's European Scythian expedition in 513 BC used Scythian tactics that involved retreating through the deep steppes to avoid a direct confrontation with his army while destroying the wells and pastures.

Due to their inferiority in ground combat during the Peloponnesian War, Athenians used their navy to engage in attrition warfare.

Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, often known as Cunctator, employed delaying strategies against Hannibal during the Second Punic War.

Campaign of Muhammad Tapar in 1109–1118 against the Nizaris of Alamut

1285 and 1286 saw the second Mongol invasion of Hungary.

Fall of Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortés in 1521

1708 Swedish invasion of Russia

American tactics used in the American Revolutionary War

the latter stages of the American Civil War, particularly the sieges of Vicksburg, Petersburg, and the overland campaign

Napoleon Bonaparte's 1812 French invasion of Russia included attrition warfare against him.

Spanish Civil War's later years (1938–1939)

Chinese tactics employed in the Second Sino-Japanese War

During World Battle II, there was a tonnage war in the Atlantic and Pacific.

World War II's Air Battle for Great Britain following the bombing of London

Battles that lasted for a long time, such as the Soviet Union's defense of its cities during the Battle of Stalingrad

The Korean War's final two years and the Battle of Tabu-dong

The War in Vietnam (Body count)

The Long War was the name given to the conflict between the British Army and the Provisional IRA during the Troubles.

The 1967–1970 Israeli–Egyptian War of Attrition.

The Afghan-Soviet War

Phases two and three of the Iran-Iraq War

Specifically, the Bosnian War (1992–1995), the Croatian Wars (1991–1992 and 1995), and the Kosovo War (1998–1999) are among the Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001).

The Afghanistan War (2001–2021)

After 2005, the Sri Lankan Civil War

The 2011 civil conflict in Libya

Conflict between Kurds and Turks (1978–present)

The Battle of Aleppo in the Syrian Civil War (2011–present), in particular.

The conflict between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan Army in Western Sahara (2020–present).

The Russian military used an attrition approach in their invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

{End Chapter 1}

Chapter 2: Battle

A battle is a conflict that takes place in armed conflict between opposing military forces, regardless of their size or number. Typically, a war consists of numerous engagements. In general, a battle is a clearly defined military engagement in terms of time, space, and force commitment. Skirmishes are occasionally used to describe an interaction where there is little mutual commitment and no clear winner.

Rarely, the term battle will also be used to describe a complete operational campaign, despite the fact that this usage substantially deviates from the term's usual or conventional definition. Typically, a protracted combat encounter in which one or both fighters shared the same tactics, materials, and strategic goals throughout the encounter is referred to as a battle when describing such campaigns. The Battle of the Atlantic, the Battle of Britain, and the Battle of Stalingrad, all of which took place during World War II, are some notable examples of this.

Military strategy directs wars and military campaigns, whereas fights occur at an operational mobility level of preparation and execution. was how strategy worked.

The word battle is a loanword from the Old French bataille, first recorded in 1297, from the Late Latin battualia, meaning exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing, from the Late Latin beat, which is also where the English word battery comes from via Middle English batri..

With changes in the structure, employment, and technology of military forces, the definition of the conflict as a concept in military science has evolved. The ideal definition of a fight, according to English military historian John Keegan, is anything which happens between two armies leading to the moral then physical collapse of one or both of them, although the causes and results of battles are rarely so easily summed up. When a conflict lasts more than a week, it is frequently because of planning and is referred to as an operation. When one side is unable to retire from combat, the other may arrange, confront, or force a battle.

A battle's main objective is always to accomplish a mission objective through the use of military force. When one of the opposing sides routs the other (i.e., forces it to withdraw or renders it militarily worthless for further combat operations) or annihilates the latter, resulting in their deaths or capture, the other is forced to renounce its purpose and surrender its forces. A conflict could result in a Pyrrhic triumph that eventually benefits the side that lost. A stalemate can happen in a battle if no solution is found. An insurgency frequently results from a disagreement where one side refuses to settle the issue through a frontal confrontation using conventional combat.

The bulk of fights up until the 19th century were brief, with many only lasting a few hours. (The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) and the Battle of Nations (1813) were remarkable in that they lasted three days.) This was primarily because it was challenging to equip mobile forces or carry out night operations. Typically, siege warfare was used to extend a combat. The First World War in the 20th century saw a dramatic evolution of trench warfare with its siege-like characteristics, extending the length of fights to days and weeks. As a result, unit rotation became necessary to prevent combat weariness, with troops ideally not being in a theater of operations for more than a month.

The term battle has been misused throughout military history to refer to nearly any magnitude of conflict, particularly by strategic forces with hundreds of thousands of soldiers that may be engaged in operations or one fight at a time (Battle of Leipzig) (Battle of Kursk). The area that a battle takes up is determined by the participants' weaponry. As in the instance of the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic, a battle in this more general definition may be prolonged and take place over a vast geographic region. Battles were fought with the two sides within sight, if not actually within reach of one another, prior to the development of artillery and aviation. With the presence of the supporting units in the back areas, such as supplies, artillery, medical staff, etc., the depth of the battlefield has also expanded in modern warfare.

Battles are made up of numerous little engagements, skirmishes, and individual combats, and the participants typically only see a small portion of the entire conflict. Few British infantry who went over the top on the first day of the Somme, July 1, 1916, would have anticipated that the battle would last five months. To the infantryman, there may be little to distinguish between combat as part of a minor raid or a big offensive, nor is it likely that he anticipates the future course of the battle. Some of the Allied infantry who had just handed the French a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Waterloo fully anticipated having to engage in combat once more the following day (at the Battle of Wavre).

In order to integrate and coordinate armed forces for the military theater of operations, including air, information, land, sea, and space, battlespace is a single strategic concept. It encompasses the surroundings, elements, and circumstances that need to be comprehended in order to use combat power, safeguard the force, or carry out the mission, such as hostile and ally armed forces, infrastructure, weather, topography, and the electromagnetic spectrum.

The quantity and caliber of combatants and their equipment, the quality of the commanders' skill, and the terrain are some of the main factors that determine the outcome of battles. Armor and weapons can make the difference; on numerous times, armies have won by