According to insignia authority Barry Jason Stein in his book U.S. Army Patches, Flashes and Ovals, this is the second Shoulder Sleeve Insignia design created for the United States Army Intelligence Agency. It is not clear if this design completely replaced the first one submitted or if both were worn contemporaneously.
The shieldlike shape of this insignia suggests a strong defense against technological surprise. In the center is a sword with a barbed arrow that represents the organization’s ability to conduct threat analysis. The sword’s upward orientation toward the silver-gray cloud symbolize the unit’s missions against threat from ground, air, and space.
An atomic symbol enwraps the sword to suggest the advanced technological research carried out by the agency to assist United States technology developers. The omnidirectional character of the symbol denotes the agency’s intelligence-reporting responsibilities to both national and tactical level consumers.
The United States Intelligence Agency was a counterintelligence and human intelligence agency based at Fort Meade, Maryland. It was consolidated along with several other security and Signal agencies and organizations to for the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, or INSCOM, on 1 January 1977.