Secure Ops in ABI: What Do You Actually Lose?

Short version first: you lose your consumables, not your kit. That is the entire deal, and everything else about Secure Ops follows from it.

“So I really keep everything if I die?”

Your weapons, armour, helmet, rig and backpack are locked for the duration of the raid and returned to you whether you extract or get dropped at your own spawn. Death in Secure Ops costs you the raid, not the loadout.

What you do forfeit is the stuff you burned getting through it: rounds fired, magazines loaded, meds, food, water, grenades. Anything consumed or still carried as a consumable goes away. Standard ammo you never fired can come back with the gun; the fifteen rounds you dumped into a wall do not.

“What happens to loot I pick up?”

It converts to Koen instead of landing in your stash. Secure Ops is a cash-and-practice mode, not a haul-out mode. If you want physical items to stockpile, sell or craft with, that still requires a normal extraction. The exact conversion shown on the results screen is the one that applies to your raid — read it in-client, because the numbers have been tuned since the mode first shipped.

“Is there an entry fee?”

Yes, and also a gear-value cap. Both are printed on the mode card before you queue. Pay attention to the cap especially: it exists so nobody rolls through in a red-tier kit that a beginner has no answer to. If your loadout sits above the cap, you are not going in with it.

Do not trust fee numbers from old videos here either. Entry costs have moved between seasons.

“How is that different from Covert Ops?”

They get mixed up constantly. Covert Ops drops you into a raid already in progress with random borrowed gear, and the AI generally leaves you alone until you start something. You bring nothing of your own.

Secure Ops runs you with your kit, on the map, against everyone else — it just insures the whole thing for free. It is the better of the two for practising actual gunfights, and for feeling what your own build does without paying for the lesson.

“Then why isn’t everyone playing it?”

Because it teaches the wrong habit if you live there. Extraction pressure is what makes a good decisions in this genre, and a mode with no gear loss cannot simulate it. Use Secure Ops to learn angles, recoil, map layouts and the sound of your own footsteps under stress. Then take that into a Normal or Lockdown raid.

It also pays worse than a real successful loot run. Fine as a grind, poor as an economy plan.

“Should I be insuring my kit as well?”

If you are also running Tactical Ops that session, yes, but understand they solve different problems: the Secure Ops lock protects the kit by definition, insurance is a bet that nobody loots your body before the raid ends. Different mechanics, different payouts.

“Is it good for beating gear fear?”

Honestly? Partly. Never losing anything means never learning to stop shaking either. Our gear fear guide covers the mental side better than any mode does. And if the point of your session is reps rather than loot, the PvE practice modes are worth comparing before you queue.

If Secure Ops is missing from your mode list, it simply is not in the current rotation. Check back after the next patch rather than hunting for a hidden setting.