The U.S. National Defense Strategy and the Return of an Attritional Approach

The National Defense Strategy published by the Trump administration in January 2026 marks a turning point in U.S. military planning, signaling a recognition of the likelihood of attritional conflict in future warfare. With such conflict in mind, it emphasizes the need for robust military production capacity and reliable supply chains. Rather than treating attrition as a contingency to be avoided, the document increasingly views it as a scenario for which Washington must be prepared.

On January 23, under the Trump administration, the United States Department of Defense—now referred to as the Department of War (DoW) following an executive order in 2025—released the unclassified 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), marking a shift toward practical realism and the strengthening of U.S. military readiness. As a follow-up document to the National Security Strategy (NSS), the NDS provides insight into the Department’s priorities. To this end, the document bases its strategic approach on four lines of effort: defending the U.S. homeland; deterring China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation; increasing burden-sharing with U.S. partners and allies; and revitalizing the U.S. defense industrial base.This last point is of primary interest for this analysis, whose main objective is to assess whether the 2026 NDS marks a shift in US defense planning by treating attrition as an unavoidable condition rather than a contingency to be deterred. Despite the contested nature of attritional warfare, it is important to acknowledge its necessity as part of a holistic defense strategy, even more so in light of China’s rise and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

Redefining attrition as an element of modern warfare

The International Encyclopedia of the First World War defines attrition as the “sustained process of wearing down an opponent so as to force their physical collapse through continuous losses in personnel, equipment, and supplies, or to wear them down to such an extent that their will to fight collapses.” This definition suggests that attrition warfare entails high costs and heavy casualties. It is because of its devastating nature that attrition warfare has traditionally been viewed as a last resort.

Historically, wars of attrition have been associated with the large-scale industrial conflicts of the 20th century. In particular, World War I demonstrated how victory depended less on rapid maneuver than on the ability to sustain losses and exhaust the enemy’s manpower and resources over time. The post-Cold War era, however, saw a growing desire to avoid prolonged wars of attrition. In this context, U.S. military strategic thinking emphasized rapid, decisive operations enabled by technological superiority, precision strikes, and information dominance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the “shock and awe” doctrine was the dominant strategic approach at the beginning of the 2000s. In this sense, post-9/11 armed conflicts such as the Iraq War demonstrated a preference for bold, rapid military responses over a focus on the systematic erosion of an enemy’s military power.

Regardless of this, two major developments in the contemporary international arena point to a shift back toward risk-averse policies: the rise of China and the war between Ukraine and Russia. These factors accelerate the shift in perception regarding what attrition entails. The NDS, in this regard, describes China as being able to “afford to spend even more on its military” and as being “able to do so effectively.” When addressing Russia, however, the DoW acknowledges the Kremlin’s capacity to sustain war and warns of its “national resolve required to sustain a protracted war in its near abroad,” as demonstrated in its confrontation with Ukraine. Current threats to U.S. security challenge the classical conception of attrition as a last resort, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the term as a potential factor in warfare that must be integrated into defense strategies. The implication for the United States is that, in order to sustain a protracted effort, it must adapt the Joint Force to an attrition scenario.

Institutionalizing the logic of attrition in U.S. defense planning 

To grasp the significance of this institutional shift, it is necessary to look back at its immediate predecessor. The 2022 NDS, released under the Biden administration, revolved around the idea of “integrated deterrence,” which, broadly defined, refers to the aim of working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, and other instruments of U.S. national power to prevent an escalation toward open armed confrontation. This strategic approach did not emphasize attrition, where victory comes not from deterrence or a single maneuver but from sustained warfare. In fact, the focus of that document was, precisely, on preventing attrition warfare, rather than on the need to be prepared to wage it. Not coincidentally, the document affirmed that “the Joint Force will be shaped to ensure the ability to respond to small-scale, short-duration crises.”

This is not to say that previous administrations have been entirely oblivious to the risks of prolonged conflict. The 2026 NDS, however, marks an explicit departure from its predecessor, moving beyond deterrence rhetoric to formally acknowledge sustained large-scale confrontation as a condition that the Joint Force must be prepared to endure. The document itself frames this shift toward attritional terms by stating that, “this effort will require nothing short of a national mobilization, a call to industrial arms on par with similar revivals of the last century that ultimately powered our nation to victory in the world wars.” Along these lines, Secretary Pete Hegseth stated: “Our objective is simple, if monumental: to transform the entire acquisition system to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results.”

By accelerating procurement cycles, the U.S. military positions itself to adapt to changing battlefield conditions, ensuring that force regeneration keeps pace with evolving threats. In this sense, endurance is no longer understood as static stockpiling, but as dynamic adaptability, enabling the U.S. to remain operationally effective while engaged in prolonged and unpredictable conflicts.

Reindustrializing the defense sector as a new strategy

If attrition is increasingly recognized as a defining feature of future conflicts, then the ability to sustain prolonged warfare on an industrial scale becomes a necessity rather than a logistical afterthought. In this regard, the NDS has emphasized the need to revitalize and expand the U.S. defense industrial base.

More explicitly than previous administrations, the 2026 NDS emphasizes its intention to “supercharge the American defense industry so that it is ready to meet the challenges of our era as effectively as it did those of the last century.” The U.S. Defense Industrial Base (DIB) comprises a wide range of companies that provide capabilities for military requirements, from large-scale production sites to research laboratories, including major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. In this regard, China’s ongoing rise, viewed from a military perspective, has led to growing concerns. When comparing U.S. industrial capacity to that of China in 2023 alone, shipbuilding capacity in the Chinese market was 232 times greater than that of the U.S. Similarly, in 2024, the Chinese market was reportedly acquiring high-end weapons five to six times faster than its US counterpart. In this context, the productivity of the US DIB faces the risk of industrial decline.

Evidently, the intensified competition with China following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has raised concerns among policymakers about the health of the DIB. In light of this, in the context of a prolonged war, the question of revitalizing attritional warfare under a robust DIB constitutes a task of major national interest. The 2026 NDS is clear in its commitment to a long-term focus on military production capacity and supply chains. In doing so, it suggests that attrition should no longer be understood solely as battlefield losses, but as an industrial and economic contest of endurance in which the DIB plays a key role.

Final considerations

The 2026 NDS marks a turning point in U.S. military planning, signaling a recognition of the likelihood of attritional conflict in future warfare. Rather than treating attrition as a contingency to be avoided, the document increasingly views it as a scenario for which Washington must be prepared.

This shift is primarily reflected in the emphasis on revitalizing the defense industrial base (DIB). The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) suggests that the United States views the revitalization of its DIB as a strategic necessity to compete with China and sustain prolonged conflicts. The comparison with China’s shipbuilding and weapons production capacity highlights growing concerns about the erosion of U.S. industrial readiness and reinforces the notion that future military competition will depend not only on battlefield performance, but also on industrial resilience. 

As a result, the 2026 NDS institutionalizes an attritional logic in which victory may depend less on short-term operational superiority than on the ability to continuously replace losses, adapt production cycles, and sustain national mobilization over time. While attrition has remained a contested feature of warfare since the two World Wars, current realities require a reconsideration of the necessity of a Joint Force where attrition and the expectation of prolonged war should be at the center of any military strategy. Ultimately, as retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters once concluded, there is no shame in calling reality by its proper name: “We are fighting, and will fight, wars of attrition.”