DB Des Roches is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a senior international affairs fellow at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. He is an associate professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, where he specializes in countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf Cooperation Council regional security, border security, weapons transfers, missile defense, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and emerging trends.

He joined NESA in 2011 after serving the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy in numerous positions, including as director of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, the Department of Defense liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, the senior country director for Pakistan, the NATO operations director, the deputy director for peacekeeping, and the spokesman for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Prior to that, he served in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy as an international law enforcement analyst and special assistant for strategy.

Des Roches retired as a colonel from a 30-year career in the active and reserve Army, serving on the Joint Staff, U.S. Special Operations Command staff, and in conventional and special operations troop units deployed throughout the Middle East, Europe, and Afghanistan. He is a regular commentator on regional affairs and author of numerous articles on Gulf security. He is the editor of The Arms Trade, Military Services and the Security Market in the Gulf: Trends and Implications (Berlin: Gerlach, 2016) and the theme editor of the Oxford Journal of Gulf Studies Spring 2016 special issue on security. He holds advanced degrees from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and Kings College London, which he attended as a British Marshall Scholar. Des Roches also holds an advanced degree from the U.S. Army War College, and a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy, West Point.