An apparatus for eliminating the phenomenon of speckle with regard to laser light reflected from a distant target whose roughness exceeds the wavelength of the laser light. The apparatus includes a half plate wave member, a first polarizing beam splitter member, a totally reflecting right angle prism, and a second polarizing beam splitter member, all of which are in serial optical alignment, that are used in combination to convert a linearly (i.e., vertically) polarized light beam, which is emitted by a laser having a known coherence length, into two coincident, orthogonally polarized, beams that are not coherent with each other, and that have an optical path difference which exceeds the known coherence length of the emitting laser, to eliminate the speckle.
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