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Admirals seek a return to the days when, in the words of the Edwardian Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, the Army was a "projectile to be fired by the British Navy". The so-called "maritime manoeuvre", according to naval sources, aims to "absorb bits of the Army and the Air Force under joint command" in a "composite joint projection force".

The concept is the Navy's contribution to the Government's defence review, and it appears that the argument is gaining some ground, with plans for a joint Navy-RAF Harrier force thought likely to emerge. Navy Sea Harriers and RAF Harrier GR7s are already deployed together aboard Invincible for the Iraq crisis

"There's still an awful lot of work to be done before we can say a joint Harrier force will happen, but as we look at expeditionary forces for the future the logic becomes increasingly apparent," said a senior RAF planner.

Naval officers want to do more than this, however. They say that the end of the Cold War, the growth of small, regional conflicts and the potential of new technology means that sea power can be the decisive element in future conflict, as it was before 1914.

Admirals want to move the Navy away from "traditional, compartmentalised" operations. "We're not facing large numbers of tanks in the middle of Europe," said a senior naval officer. "We're facing dispersed enemies all over the world. For the first time in 150 years the British military has the chance to go from being a large, continental, land-based force to a sea-based one which can be deployed to any trouble spot." Artillery and troops currently operated by the Army on land could transfer and be projected from the sea, says the Navy.

Armed with new technology, ships standing offshore would be able to fire "smart" missiles up to 800 miles inland and conduct air operations up to 200 miles inland.

"Our biggest asset is the ability to get somewhere at the time of political choice," said one officer at the Maritime Warfare Centre at HMS Dryad, Portsmouth, which has developed the concept. "We don't have to get a host nation's support. We can lie off any coast in the world whenever we like."

One Army source described the concept as "empire-building", aimed at getting the Navy more equipment in the Government's strategic defence review. "It is going to be rather difficult to take and hold ground from the comfort of a ship 12 miles offshore," he said. "Even if we accept the argument that the Army should act as a projectile, we haven't anything like enough warships to fit all the artillery, troops or tanks on, and buying more would cost a fortune." 

The Navy agrees that maritime manoeuvre would be of limited use in a major continental war. "But the modern battlespace is much more dispersed," said one officer. "Small packets of well-timed, targeted force will be decisive. Future war may also be as much about denying land to the enemy, with such things as artillery, as occupying it yourself."

Even if large-scale troop and armoured operations were needed, says the Navy, the men and equipment still have to be transported there somehow. "The fastest an army can move is 100 kilometres a day. A navy can take you 400 kilometres a day," said one naval source. 

RAF sources pointed out that any future heavy-lifting aircraft could transport men and equipment even faster - albeit not on so large a scale. 

Maritime manoeuvre is now being studied by George Robertson, the Defence Secretary. In the defence review, the Navy wants to protect its fleet of surface ships - and, crucially, to win outline approval for a new, large aircraft carrier, though final approval may not come until later. The Navy says that other services should not be alarmed because equipment such as the carrier will become genuinely joint assets, to be shared by the Navy, Army and Air Force.