 Following graduation from the United States Military Academy, he was commissioned in the Air Force and served from September 1950 through December 1954 in the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Albuquerque, New Mexico.After graduation from the Air Force Institute of Technology in September 1956, he was assigned to the Northern Air Materiel Area, Pacific, with duty as chief of production at the Kawasaki-Gifu Contract Facility at Gifu, Japan.Stansberry was assigned as assistant professor of air science at Michigan College of Mining and Technology from April 1959 to August 1961.