Politico, citing sources, said that Biden and about 100 other members of the 261st Tactical Theater Signal Brigade of the Delaware Army National Guard are scheduled to leave Fort Bliss in Texas for the Mideast within two weeks.

There has been speculation that Beau Biden might take his father's Senate seat. One possibility is that someone would be appointed to hold the seat with Biden running for it in two years.

Three of the four presidential and vice presidential candidates this year had sons in the military and facing deployment. That inspired an op-ed piece in The New York Times by John Eisenhower, a career Army officer who served in combat in Korea while his father was president. Eisenhower suggested that he had been selfish to seek an assignment that would be a distraction for his father.