The 470th Military Intelligence Brigade Shoulder Sleeve Insignia, or unit patch, was originally approved on 23 June 1998. In addition to black, the color version of the insignia uses Oriental blue and silvery gray in the insignia, the two branch colors of the Military Intelligence Corps. A wide, Oriental-blue area bookended by two narrow gray sections stands for three types of Intelligence: human intelligence, signals intelligence, and imagery intelligence.
A blue stripe with two gray borders is also an allusion to the Panama Canal, the unit’s longtime location, as well as to the collection and funneling of information. The black griffin, a mythological creature with an eagle’s head wings and a lion’s body, is a symbol of vigilance and strength; black represents the secrecy of the unit’s operations.
The 470th Military Brigade was originally constituted on 12 July 1944 in the Army of the United States as the 470th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment. First designated as a Brigade in 1987, the unit was inactivated on 15 October 1997 in Panama; it was then redesignated as the 470th Military Intelligence Group (28 February 2002) before being activated again (16 October 2002). It was reorganized and redesignated as Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 470th Military Intelligence Brigade on 21 September 2010. While many of its battalions have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terrorism, the Brigade’s only official campaign credits are from World War II (American Theater, no inscription) and the Armed Forces Expedition in Panama in 1989.
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470th Miliary Intelligence Brigade Unit Crest (DUI)
470th Miliary Intelligence Brigade Combat Service ID Badge (CSIB)