What Are Operator Kills in CoD MW3? Answered

When it comes to daily missions and challenges, clarity is essential. Players need to understand, quickly and easily, what they need to do to earn extra XP and rewards. The “Get Operator Kills” challenges in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 are unclear at best. Here’s what to do.

What is an Operator Kill in Modern Warfare 3?

There are tons of challenges that call for Operator Kills in Modern Warfare 3, but it’s not immediately clear what that means. In short, an Operator is any enemy player. Put another way, Operators are Call of Duty‘s name for the characters you play in-game, so any player using any of the playable character skins is an Operator.

Some modes in MW3 have additional enemy types — Zombies, for instance — but also AI-controlled soldiers in both Zombies and the Invasion game mode. If you try to complete any Operator kill challenge but focus instead on a zombie or an NPC, you won’t progress. And in that case, you can’t blame the challenge not progressing on a bug: you just aren’t doing it right.

I should mention that in Hardcore, you can’t simply kill your teammates to progress challenges. First of all, doing that at all is incredibly rude (to put it professionally), but it also won’t give you any progress toward a Daily Challenge.

Related: How to Fix Bugged Daily Challenges Not Unlocking in CoD MW3

Speaking personally, I think a lot of the terminology in MW3 is either unclear or frustratingly vague. From changing perks into equipment to not giving precise values on how much an attachment affects a weapon’s performance, there’s a lot in the writing that could be better. I mean, there’s a lot in the game that could be better, but that’s a separate issue.

In any case, if you’re looking for more MW3 content, check out our guides on how the Armory system works, if you can play Zombies split screen, and more in our guides hub.