STABO

The STABO was designed during the Vietnam War.

SFC Clifford L. Roberts drew the first design on a napkin after having a rescue attempt fail as the wounded soldier fell out of the McGuire rig. He went to the parachute room and made the first prototype on the sewing machines they used to repair parachutes. He was then sent to present the design. The design was approved and 500 rigs were ordered. SFC Roberts was awarded a Bronze Star for the design. SFC Clifford L. "Kip" Roberts was from Shawnee, Oklahoma.

The STABO rig was a machine stitched harness similar to a parachute harness and was quite expensive and time consuming to manufacture. The harness was made of nylon material and was worn in the field as load bearing equipment (LBE) until it was needed for a rope extraction. STABO harnesses were made in small, medium, and large sizes.

To ready a STABO harness for rope extraction, two leg straps were brought from the back of the harness up between the legs and snapped into D rings mounted in the front of the harness. A standard issue pistol belt laced through the center of the rig was buckled tightly around the waist of the wearer, a chest strap was fastened across the chest, and two snaps at the top of the harness would snap into two D rings attached to the rope dropped from the helicopter.^[1].

It was more secure, and comfortable, than the McGuire and left the user's hand free to operate weapons.^[2] However it was not as comfortable as LBE when worn under a rucksack, and not as good as standard LBE at distributing the weight of personal kit

As the STABO was worn as personal kit a large number needed to be maintained and if any soldier was separated from his LBE then extraction by another method had to be found.

The current method for extracting troops, Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction, is a variation of this system.

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