Beretta has spent its 500th anniversary year building one-offs, and TFB has already looked at one of them, the 92FS Diamond. The APX Falco is a different kind of special. There is gold on it, and a lot of hand engraving, but the most interesting thing about this pistol is a piece of engineering that has nothing to do with decoration: the red dot is not mounted on the slide. It is part of it. Beretta worked with Burris, the American optics maker that sits inside the Beretta Group, to machine the slide and the red dot housing from a single block of steel. Beretta calls it the first monolithic integration of a red dot and a slide, says the design is patented, and claims that Beretta and Burris are the first and currently only companies able to do it. Getting there took miniaturization, insulation and battery optimization work from Burris, which is a polite way of saying that packing optic electronics into a slide that reciprocates and heats up is not easy. Almost every problem I have seen with pistol red dots comes from the interface between optic and slide: plates, screws that walk loose, footprints that are nearly compatible, and dots sitting high above the bore. Remove the interface and most of those problems go with it. Beretta lists the benefits as minimal dot height, long-term stability, perfect alignment and lasting zero retention, and on paper that is exactly what you would expect. The other side of it is just as interesting. If the optic is the slide, you cannot swap it, upgrade it or send it off for repair on its own. Beretta does not say how the battery is accessed or what happens if the emitter fails, and on a production pistol those would be the first questions I would ask. On a one-off built to celebrate 500 years, they matter less, but they are the questions that decide whether this idea ever leaves the special projects department. There is a bit of history in the choice of pistol, too. The APX started life as Beretta's polymer-framed striker pistol for the US Army's Modular Handgun System trials. The Falco keeps the name and the DNA but throws out the polymer frame for a skeletonized steel one in a Diamond-Like Carbon finish, which Beretta says required a complete rethink of weight distribution and balance. The magazine well is machined into the frame for faster reloads. A service pistol designed to be cheap and tough has become one of the most exclusive handguns Beretta has ever made.The performance package follows the same thinking. The slide is lightweight and ported, with an integrated compensator for faster cycling and better recoil control. The barrel is shorter and pre-tensioned for rigidity and less vibration, which Beretta says improves point-of-impact stability - if anything of that would matter on a handgun that most likely will never fire. Then there is the art, which is of course the main point of this exercise. Falco is Italian for falcon, and the design is built around the fastest bird on earth. The slide's tapered lines are meant to suggest airflow and a bullet's trajectory, and the magazine release becomes the falcon's eye, a motif that repeats across the grip and slide. Hand-engraved, gold-inlaid details trace what Beretta calls the path of the eternal spark, its symbol for 500 years of craftsmanship.Even the case is a project of its own. It is machined from a single block of aluminium to echo the pistol's lines, with a black Alcantara French-fitted interior handmade by the Pietro Beretta Atelier in Gardone Val Trompia, and the golden 500-year logo inside and out. Beretta CEO and GM Carlo Ferlito describes the Falco as a statement that sets Beretta apart from mainstream tactical handgun design. I would put it another way. This is a concept car. Nobody buys a concept car to drive to work, but the ideas in it have a habit of showing up in production models a few years later. If a slide-integrated red dot appears on an everyday APX one day, this is where it started. The video Beretta made for the Falco is worth a few minutes, especially for the close-ups of the integrated optic and the engraving. Beretta APX Falco at a glance:One-off creation for Beretta's 500th anniversaryDeveloped with Burris, part of the Beretta GroupRed dot housing and slide machined from a single block of steel, patentedLightweight ported slide with integrated compensatorShorter, pre-tensioned barrelSkeletonized steel frame with Diamond-Like Carbon finishIntegrated, precision-machined magazine wellIntegrated chassis with refined trigger components, short travel and crisp breakFalcon-inspired slide lines, magazine release styled as the falcon's eyeHand-engraved, gold-inlaid "eternal spark" detailsPresentation case machined from a single aluminium block, black Alcantara interior, handmade by the Pietro Beretta Atelier Do you think this technology integration will come to production pistols in the future? If you think about it, the original Steyr AUG and the FN P90 are earlier examples of an optic that is part of the gun rather than mounted on it - except they were mounted on parts that don’t really move apart from a slight recoil.If this post has you ready to hit the range, head over to gunranges.com - a free directory to help you find shooting ranges near you, wherever you are in the United States.