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How to unlock the Bombardment in Call of Duty: Warzone

Find out where to find the Protocol Key and how the Bombardment works in Call of Duty Warzone to call in a rain of explosives around you.

Two operators firing at each other at close range. They are battling in front of an enormous cargo ship named the Vodianoy

 The Bombardment is no longer available in Call of Duty Warzone because the original version of the game was shut down. However, this guide will be updated and will come in handy if the Bombardment and the associated unlock challenge ever returns.

The original Call of Duty: Warzone added the intriguing new killstreak item – the Bombardment – along with other high-value items such as Loadout Drops, Advanced UAVs, and the return of the Foresight ability in early 2021. While it’s no longer available with the integration with MW3, Bombardment was one of the things you could obtain from the mysterious zombie containment computers located in bunkers around Verdansk.

These doubled up as Buy Stations but offered a different range to regular Buy Stations. While most items could be bought with cash (Foresight, for example, was buyable for $20,000) the Bombardment was listed under its own subsection, ‘Containment Protocol’, and could only be acquired with a specific key.

Similar to a Cluster Strike or Precision Airstrike but with much bigger explosions and longer duration, the Bombardment was a strong killstreak to have. It was also not manually called in and instead rained down automatically on the infected area of the map where the zombies were.

How to get the Bombardment in Warzone

While other Warzone killstreaks and items offered by the zombie computer screens were bought with cash, the Bombardment could not. Instead, it required a key to obtain.

To get it, you had to head to the zombie event location and activate the relevant terminal. Then, you would have to kill all the zombies to beat the event and claim your loot crate reward. As part of this, you would receive the Protocol Access Key.

Once you picked up this Protocol Key from a zombie loot crate, you had to head to one of the bunkers that contained a zombie computer, interact with it to bring up the Buy Station menu, and you would be able to trade in your Protocol Key access card to get yourself a Bombardment.

As you can see, it was quite an arduous process to get the Bombardment, though it was worth the effort.

How does the Bombardment work in Warzone

When you picked up a Bombardment in Warzone, it began automatically and was not called in manually like regular killstreaks.

It was an aerial hail of explosions, which would only affect the area in which the zombies were currently roaming. The Bombardment lasted for a whole minute – essentially trapping any players in the marked area inside for fear of being downed by the massive explosions.

As this was not a player-controlled killstreak, you couldn’t keep this in your pocket for the final circle, for example. This was more of an easter egg than a legitimate killstreak – but it could still pick you up a few eliminations if enemy players were out in the open.

While it wasn’t meta-breaking by any means, we do miss Warzone’s bombardment killstreak and zombie takeover event. Having explosions rain down around you to suppress your enemies certainly felt powerful, even if it didn’t rack up tons of kills for you.