How to unlock the Striker-9 in MW3

While the current crop of submachine guns in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 isn’t too strong, a couple of them are worth using in multiplayer. One of them is the Striker-9, which can only be unlocked in one of two ways in MW3.

The Striker-9 isn’t to be confused with the regular Striker. The variant uses 9mm ammunition and is much stronger than its counterpart, featuring better damage range, fire rate, and accuracy. However, unlike the regular Striker, the Striker-9 won’t be unlocked for you by default. In fact, you won’t be able to unlock the Striker-9 at all just by leveling up.

Instead, you need to follow one of the two unlock methods I will show you in the guide below.

Unlocking the Striker-9 in MW3

The first way to unlock the Striker-9 is through the Armory Unlock Challenges system. This is a new system in MW3 that makes you either win matches or complete Daily Challenges to unlock specific weapons and other gear.

You unlock the Armory Unlock Challenges at level 25 and once that happens, you can access the armory from your challenges menu in multiplayer. Here, you can select a number of weapons and gear to activate. Obviously, if you want to unlock the Striker-9, you should activate it from the weapons tab in the Armory Unlocks menu.

From here, all you have to do is complete Daily Challenges or win matches five times. You can mix and match challenge completions with wins, so long as you end up with five with the Striker-9 activated. Make sure the Striker-9 is activated by going to the main lobby screen in multiplayer and seeing if the Striker-9 appears as your current unlock in the challenges box.

Once you complete five challenges/wins, the Striker-9 is yours to use in MW3. However, there is also another way to unlock the weapon that doesn’t require multiplayer at all. You can actually use Zombies to unlock the Striker-9 for use in multiplayer, which I’ll explain below:

• Successfully exfil from a Zombies match with the Striker-9 equipped in one of your weapon slots on your character.
  • You can find the Striker-9 by killing Zombies, enemy AI, and other loot sources in Zombies, such as caches. You can also purchase it from a Wall Buy or get it out of the Mystery Box. Once you find it, loot the weapon, head to an exfil point, and successfully leave the match. If you manage to do that, the Striker-9 will automatically unlock for you in MW3 multiplayer.

And those are the two methods to unlock the Striker-9 in MW3. It’s up to you which one to pick, but the Armory Unlock method is likely going to be a little faster unless you get lucky and find the Striker-9 quickly in a Zombies match.