Attrition warfare 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 . See also . Military theory :