Searching for the Silver Bullet in Wars of Attrition: Innovation-Imitation Races in World War I and Ukraine

Do innovations matter in wars of attrition? Studies of military innovation often assume that wartime innovation is critical to attaining victory, and if militaries fail to innovate effectively, they attribute this failure to any number of organizational pathologies. Contrary to these assumptions, I argue that innovations in wars of attrition do not succeed, not due to some irrationality on the military's part that stifles innovation, but due to the opposing side's responses to the innovation. While the existential pressures of attrition warfare force both sides to continually innovate, these innovations, though effective, remain incremental due to time and resource constraints and do not produce a sustained breakthrough. Consequently, facing increased pressure from the innovation, the opposing side will negate, or produce a countermeasure against, the innovation and, failing that, it will imitate the innovation, eliminating any advantage produced by the innovation. I demonstrate my argument through analyses of tactical and technological innovations in World War I and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, before concluding with implications for U.S. military policy.