AA-12

The  is a fully-automatic shotgun featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Single Player
The AA-12 is an uncommon gun to see in singleplayer, and it appears in the campaign levels S.S.D.D, The Only Easy Day... Was Yesterday, The Gulag, Contingency, Loose Ends, and Just Like Old Times. It also appears in the Special Ops missions O Cristo Redentor, Acceptable Losses, Estate Takedown, Snatch &amp; Grab and Wetwork. It is also seen being used by Shadow Company soldiers. Its fire rate is far faster in singleplayer than multiplayer and can waste ammunition, which makes it a powerful, yet unreliable gun to use.

Multiplayer
The AA-12 is unlocked at Level 18.

The AA-12 is unique as it is fully automatic and utilizes a box magazine. It has an 8-shell magazine capacity, which is doubled when the Extended Magazines attachment is used, which balances the weapon's power and speed. The AA-12 empties its magazine far more quickly than it reloads, though this is slightly offset when Sleight of Hand or Extended Magazines are utilized.

The AA-12's main downfall is that it only has one extra magazine unless using Scavenger Pro. It has moderate recoil, but this is usually negligible due to its limited range, and shotguns are often hip-fired for wider spray. It also often requires 2+ hits even in close range to kill, but this is also negligible because of the weapon's automatic fire capability.

Equipping a silencer is not recommended, as this will limit its already short range effectiveness. Using Extended Magazines will increase the capacity to 16 shells, allowing prolonged fire but limits it to only one magazine, unless using Scavenger. Using Extended Mags in conjunction with Scavenger and its Pro version (as otherwise, with Extended Mags, users spawn with no extra magazines) can make it a highly useful weapon, and has made some players use it as a "primary" weapon. It is also notable that with the Grip attachment, the AA-12's switch time is noticeably quicker than without.

Weapon Attachments
thumb|300px|right|AA12 Attachment Overview
 * Red Dot Sight
 * Heartbeat Sensor (Special Ops only)
 * Silencer
 * Grip
 * FMJ
 * Holographic Sight
 * Extended Magazines

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized
The AA-12 appears as one of the two shotguns available in Modern Warfare: Mobilized, the other being the SPAS-12. Though the AA-12 has a similar look to the AA-12 in Modern Warfare 2, there are many differences between the two. First of all, the AA-12 is a frequent starting weapon in the later levels of campaign mode; is used in the U.S. Marine missions most frequently. It also comes with a 32-round drum magazine by default, much greater damage per shell, a greater one-shot kill range, near infinite pellet range, and a much lower and controllable rate of fire than the Modern Warfare 2 version.

Singleplayer
In single player, the AA-12 is a versatile weapon, having a near infinite range, high damage, and a large 32 shell drum magazine. The extremely high range allows the player to make a kill at any distance, though the pellets will spread apart as the distance between the player and the target increases, negating the one-shot kill effect and decreasing accuracy considerably. Combined with the high damage, large shell capacity and near infinite range, one can fire multiple shells to make a kill at long range if needed. As mentioned before, the AA-12 is found in the later levels of campaign mode as a starting weapon, more specifically, in the levels Training, Closing In, To the Rig, and Oil Rig Confrontation.

Multiplayer
In multiplayer, the AA-12 is the second weapon to be unlocked for the Coalition multiplayer faction, taking 150 kills with the Coalition faction to earn. Unlike the single player counter-part, the multiplayer is much weaker, needing at least 3 hits at close range to achieve a kill. Despite this it is a great weapon to use if you are just getting into the game as it is one of, if not, the easiest weapons to use in the game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
The AA-12 was featured as the player's primary weapon in the E3 demo. It has a new black finish and seems to be more tactically modified than the Modern Warfare 2 version, much like the differences between the Call of Duty 4 M1014 and Modern Warfare 2 version.



Trivia

 * The AA-12 has a different reload when the Heartbeat Sensor is equipped (only available in Special Ops); the empty magazine will actually be thrown away when reloading, instead of disappearing off-screen as is the case with other attachments. The Heartbeat Sensor is also very visible even when aiming down the sight, a characteristic that is shared with multiple weapons including the TAR-21 and the L86 LSW.
 * In the Spec Ops missions "Acceptable Losses" and "O Cristo Redentor", players can use the AA-12 with three different attachments, the Red Dot Sight, Silencer and a Heartbeat Sensor. This is impossible in multiplayer, as the player can only equip one attachment at a time (two with Bling Pro as a perk), and it is impossible to attach a Heartbeat Sensor to a shotgun. This may mean, that like SMG's, it was possible to attach Heartbeat Sensors to shotguns but was removed from multiplayer.
 * In Modern Warfare 2, the AA-12 has the smallest magazine size of any fully-automatic weapon throughout the entire Call of Duty series.
 * The AA-12 has the coding to be a primary weapon and to be equipped with camouflage.
 * In Modern Warfare: Mobilized the AA-12 ejects pink shells. This happens also with the SPAS-12.
 * The pick-up icon in the Campaign labels it as "AA-12 Shotgun".
 * It most likely has a slower rate of fire in multiplayer for balancing reasons.
 * The AA-12 is the only secondary weapon that can equip a heartbeat sensor.
 * This is the only shotgun in the series to use a magazine, rather than to load each shell individually.

AA-12