What decides if a smarter army can win a battle?

We study the kinetics associated with a ``war'' in which an attacking army attempts to win over a spatially dispersed defender on a 2D lattice. The levels of engagement are comparable in our study. The conflicting parties can annihilate, win or lose at any given site depending upon certain preselected rules of engagement. The attacker possesses higher intelligence, which is manifested through the moves of the attackers. We show that an ``intelligent'' attacker with subcritical number of attackers cannot win in the engagement.