'It is like during guerrilla warfare,' Mr Gerard Chaliand, an independent specialist on asymmetric conflict, told AFP. 'Groups learnt from experience and the mistakes of those who had gone before them.
'There is a sort of accumulation of knowledge every time,' he added, declaring that he was 'unsurprised' by the methods employed during the 60-hour attack on India's financial capital between Nov 26 and 29.
'They used every available bit of information and applied it in a rapid manner,' he said.
'Piracy is not a classic tactic but it has already been used in the southern Philippines' by Islamist insurgents, he noted.
According to the official Indian version of events, 10 young men trained over the course of 18 months in Pakistan by the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba movement left the southern port city of Karachi by boat.
At sea, they seized an Indian trawler, then made for Mumbai by dinghy before spreading out across the south of the city and launching a series of attacks with automatic weapons, grenades and explosives.
Two men, who opened fire at the city's main railway station, set off a timer to blow up the taxi which took them there in order to create confusion and cover their tracks.
The others took over two luxury hotels and a Jewish cultural centre, taking a number of hostages.
Mumbai police chief Hassan Gafoor has described the militants as being on a 'suicide mission'. Nine were killed in battles with Indian commandos. A total of 163 civilians and security personnel also lost their lives.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in India and Pakistan this week to try to defuse tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, described the attacks as using tactics previously unseen on the sub-continent.
'Mumbai was a commando operation bent on mass killing with automatic weapons and explosives,' an official at a European anti-terrorism organisation told AFP on condition of anonymity.
'This operation marks a hardening and militarisation of the actions used: reconnoitring before attacking, deployment by sea, devastating firepower by several commandos but no negotiations with the state or any demands.'
According to Indian intelligence sources quoted in media reports last week, accomplices of the militants had been on a 'reconnaissance mission' a month before the attacks.
They are alleged to have pretended to be students and said to have even taken rooms in the hotels targeted, leaving behind weapons.
But Mumbai police deny any local link or that the militants had inside help.
Mr Chaliand said: 'What is particularly remarkable is the scale of the operation, with so many targets attacked in such a short space of time.
'It was also a technically successful operation, if one accepts the theory that there were only 10 of them,' he added, doubting the police insistence that the attacks were mounted entirely from abroad.
Islamabad has said it is still awaiting 'concrete proof' of allegations by New Delhi that a group based in Pakistan carried out the devastating Mumbai attacks.
New Delhi has increasingly pointed the finger at Islamabad over the violence, which has been referred to as 'India's 9/11', and has enraged public opinion, threatening a slow-moving peace process.
Suspicion has focused on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group which has fought Indian control of divided Kashmir. Lashkar was blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which pushed the two nations to the brink of war. -- AFP