Detection of optical targets using laser illumination has become an increasingly valuable military tool. In order to better understand typical detection scenarios for a laser illumination system and to improve target detection performance, intensity probability density functions of retroreflected near-infrared laser light were experimentally measured over a near-ground line-of-sight optical path. Returns from a corner cube and a simple lens-mirror system were recorded under a variety of atmospheric conditions, as measured by changes in the refractive-index structure parameter C 2 n . In addition to its applicability to target detection, this work is relevant to atmospheric propagation research and to free-space laser communication studies.