Is it a UUOC (useless use of cat) to redirect one file to another?

If I want to make the contents of file2 match the contents of file1, I could obviously just run cp file1 file2.

However, if I want to preserve everything about file2 except the contents—owner, permissions, extended attributes, ACLs, hard links, etc., etc., then I wouldn't want to run cp.* In that case I just want to plop the contents of file1 into file2.

It seems like the following would do it:

< file1 > file2

But it doesn't work. file2 is truncated to nothing and not written to. However,

cat < file1 > file2

does work.

It surprised me that the first version doesn't work.

Is the second version a UUOC? Is there a way to do this without invoking a command, merely by using redirections?

_{Note: I'm aware that UUOC is more of a pedantic point than a true anti-pattern.}

*_{As tniles09 discovered, cp will in fact work in this case.}