WASHINGTON — The former commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission and all U.S. forces in Afghanistan will join Sig Sauer as a defense adviser, according to a statement from the company on Tuesday.
Former Gen. Scott Miller, who has also served as commander of Joint Special Operations Command, is a veteran of numerous conflicts, including the Battle of Mogadishu and counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“General Miller is an exceptional addition to our team and comes at one of the most exciting times for our company as we begin the historic process of fielding the Next Generation Squad Weapons with the U.S. Army,” Ron Cohen, president and CEO of Sig Sauer, said in a statement. “His experience in close-quarters combat combined with his proven leadership ability will be invaluable to us.”
Miller joins Sig Sauer at a time when the company is tasked with building the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon. The service announced in April that the company was selected to supply the NGSW, a weapon with 6.8mm cartridges that will replace the M4 carbine and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon for close combat units.
The contract for the rifle variants totaled $2.7 billion, according to government documents. Sig Sauer also won the handgun contract in 2017 to replace the M9 Beretta, the Army’s pistol of choice for more than 30 years. The deals will make Sig Sauer the provider of the vast majority of arms to close combat forces and possibly special operations forces.
Hiring Miller, who served in the tier-one Delta Special Operations Detachment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, could be aimed at encouraging SOCOM to pick up the weapon system for its forces.
“While I served on active duty I’ve always been a proponent of ensuring that our service members had the right lethal capabilities available to them in order to safeguard our national interests,” Miller, a West Point graduate, said in a statement.
Zamone “Z” Perez is a reporter at Military Times. He previously worked at Foreign Policy and Ufahamu Africa. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he researched international ethics and atrocity prevention in his thesis. He can be found on Twitter @zamoneperez.
