The use of special forces has increased rapidly due to terrorist threats, hybrid and irregular warfare. This has also resulted in an increased need for special and conventional forces to cooperate. Pirate attacks outside the horn of Africa and the bombing of USS Cole demonstrate how these asymmetrical threats also have an impact on the naval arena. The aim of this thesis is to understand how the six principles in McRaven’s special forces theory can explain the outcome of the rescue operation during the Maersk Alabama Hijacking in 2009, where DEVGRU (United States Navy Special Warfare Development Group) and conventional naval forces cooperated and managed to successfully liberate Captain Richard Philips. These findings will contribute to assess the critical prerequisites of success for special forces operations in the modern naval environment and evaluate if these operations can be explained by existing special forces theories. The result of this study shows that McRavens theory can explain the outcome of the rescue of Philips, were the principles of surprise, simplicity and security had large significance. The rescue operation also shows that cooperation between DEVGRU and the US navy vessels were essential for the operational success.