I wrote yesterday about the U.S. Navy’s deployment of the LaWS laser weapon system in the Persian Gulf. In the blog comment section, “Joe” asks, “Will this weapon work on a rainy day?”

The Navy is not particularly forthcoming about the limitations of LaWS, but back in September gizmag reported that the U.S. Army’s High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL-MD) 10-kW mobile high-energy laser, developed by Boeing, has successfully engaged targets not only in the clear skies of New Mexico but in the wind, rain, and fog of Florida.

Wrote David Szondy in gizmag, “Exactly how this was done is something that Boeing is keeping close to its chest, but it’s likely that it involves using a reference laser beam to probe through, for example, the fog so that computers could analyze how the atmospheric conditions were distorting the laser.” He suggests that the HEL-MD optics could refocus the weapon beam to compensate for the distortion due to the weather.

But earlier reports (here and here, for example) suggested that the Navy’s LaWS could be thwarted by weather.