![]() ![]() Enemy armies are largely gone from the field after being defeated by our armies, our forces patrol, insurgents kill our soldiers with small arms fire, IEDs, and suicide bombs, and then melt into the crowd. The central feature of attritional war is the gradual wasting, physical and psychological, of United States forces without inflicting similar loss on our foes. It is often experienced at small unit levels, company, platoon, and squad. Attritional WarĪttritional war is waged against American and other allied units by snipers, suicide bombers, and those who plant what were called booby traps in Vietnam and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan and Iraq. This paper describes the characteristics of attritional war, distinguishes it from conventional war, gives examples of attritional war from literature, and considers why it matters as we prepare ourselves for future conflicts. But in all three conflicts, we lost-at considerable cost-the attritional wars. ![]() The results of our counterinsurgency efforts are less clear. In Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we defeated our enemies in traditional warfare. It often begins as the traditional war is winding down but may happen simultaneously. Counterinsurgency (COIN), the second phase of conventional war, consists of retaliatory attacks on insurgents, creating relationships with local leaders, building infrastructure, “winning the hearts and minds,” and may include efforts to create democratic nations. It is referred to in this paper as traditional war, and is what we generally think of as “war,” whether on a large scale D-Day canvas, or in other tactical contexts taught at Fort Benning, Quantico, and elsewhere. ![]() The first part of the conventional military activity phase is troops versus troops engaged in activities for which they have been trained. The attritional war phase of our three modern wars is what distinguishes them from past conflicts. Modern wars have two phases: conventional military activity followed by the slow but deadly erosion of our troops’ ability and will to carry out their mission, called in this paper attritional war. The United States has fought three modern wars: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Attritional War: The Neglected Phase of Modern Warfare Thomas Neely ![]()
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