As part of its 500th anniversary celebration, Italian gunmaker Beretta unveiled the APX Falco last week in Gardone Val Trompia, a one-of-one pistol chambered in 9mm Luger and built with Burris, the American optics brand that also sits under the Beretta Holding umbrella. Its party trick rides right on top. Instead of a red dot screwed to a slide cut or adapter plate, the APX Falco’s optic housing is machined from the same block of steel as the slide itself. Beretta calls it the first pistol with a natively integrated red dot, and the design is patented.
Building the sight into the slide lets the dot sit lower, keeps it aligned for good and should hold zero long after a conventional mount would need attention. Burris took on the hard part, shrinking the electronics and working out the insulation and battery life needed to survive inside a slide that slams back and forth with every shot.
For Beretta, the project is also a nod to a pistol that marked a turning point for the company.
“APX, the first Beretta striker pistol, was launched as a platform in 2017, and it was a real revolution within our company, being so tied to the icon of our SA/DA pistol, the M9,” said Carlo Ferlito, CEO and general manager of Fabbrica d’Armi Pietro Beretta. He described the APX Falco as a statement, “positioning Beretta aside from the mainstream design of the tactical handguns arena.”
Underneath, the APX Falco strays even further from its roots. The APX traditionally rides on a polymer frame, but this one gets a skeletonized steel frame wearing a Diamond-Like Carbon finish. Moving that much mass around forced Beretta’s engineers to rethink weight distribution and balance from the ground up. An oversized, precision-machined magazine well is built into the frame rather than added afterward.
Up front, a lightened, ported slide works with an integrated compensator to speed cycling and keep muzzle rise in check. Beretta also shortened the barrel and pre-tensioned it, stiffening it to cut vibration and keep point of impact consistent. Inside the integrated chassis, refined trigger components deliver short travel and a clean break.
Then there’s the plumage. Look closely at the grip and the magazine release reveals itself as the falcon’s eye, with laser-engraved feathers fanning out across the frame and onto the slide before giving way to a faceted, almost crystalline pattern near the magazine well. Hand-engraved, gold-inlaid lines streak along the slide like air peeling off a wingtip, tracing what Beretta calls the “eternal spark” of its five centuries. A gold anniversary medallion is set into both sides of the grip.
Even the box got the treatment. Its presentation case is machined from a single block of aluminum, with sides that follow the same swept lines as the pistol. Inside, artisans at the Pietro Beretta Atelier in Gardone Val Trompia handmade a black Alcantara French-fitted interior, and the gold 500-year logo appears inside and out.
Burris General Manager Bruno Beccaria said the optic was never treated as an afterthought. “The red dot is not an accessory added at the end,” he said. “It has been an integral part of the design from the very beginning. We didn’t want to simply pair two components, but to create a unified system in which each element is conceived in relation to the other.”
There is only one APX Falco, and Beretta hasn’t said whether the monolithic optic will migrate to production pistols. But the company has shown it can be done. For a species of handgun that has spent the past decade evolving optic cuts and adapter plates, that may be the first sign of a new branch on the family tree.
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