An Iconic Pistol Perfected: The Beretta 92 Elite LTT from Langdon Tactical
Is the Beretta 92 Elite LLT the greatest hammer-fired pistol ever created? You be the judge.
No other pistol that washed upon our American shores has a more iconic status than the Beretta 92. Three decades of proven combat-tested reliability and sweet 80s Christmas movies have cemented the Beretta 92 into the pantheon and discussion of “best pistols in American history.” Yes, we all know that the Lord Himself came down from the Heavens and bestowed upon John Moses Browning the Model 1911, destined to lead the Israelites out of Egypt from the business end of the mighty .45 ACP. But by the 1980s, the US military was ready for a change. And that change was the Beretta 92. Beating out the Sig Sauer P226, the Beretta 92, now designated as the M9, became the official sidearm of the United States military.
A Beretta 92 Elite LTT being fired with shell casing in the air.
Just like the sacred 1911, EVERYONE has an opinion on the Beretta 92, good and bad. Ask any servicemember who carried an M9 into battle, from Panama to Desert Storm, Afghanistan to Iraq, and many will tell you the same thing. The M9 was a heavy, clunky brick of a sidearm with a heavy double-action trigger pull…but it always went bang when the trigger was pulled. Any claims of unreliability can be attributed to the fact that many of the M9 pistols in service were often lacking in timely required maintenance or experienced frequent use and abuse.
When any pistol is dry-fired thousands of times by bored soldiers needing a field expedient time killer practicing their quick draw, the springs will naturally loosen and need to be replaced, and that doesn’t always happen in a timely manner. And sometimes, maybe using a sidearm in lieu of a hammer to bang in tent stakes isn’t the brightest idea. But you get the idea, the M9 was an often used and often abused military sidearm. But again, it always went bang when the trigger was pulled. And that’s where the subconscious love for the pistol creeps in, knowing that no matter how much it may have been hated as a service pistol at a time when the striker-fired wave was sweeping the civilian market, there was an underlying level of confidence that the M9 was an extremely reliable sidearm. A break glass in case of an emergency weapon system that would never let you down.
The Beretta 92 Elite LTT Offerings
Enter the Beretta 92 Elite LTT by Langdon Tactical. Ernest Langdon, CEO of Langdon Tactical, has a long and storied career with the Beretta. The two are synonymous with each other, as Ernest showed competition shooters that the Beretta 92 could not only compete with other performance pistols but beat them as well. He looked at the shortcomings of the Beretta 92 platform and offered a solution.
Beretta 92 Elite LTT on top of a target.
So what are the mechanical benefits of owning a Beretta 92 Elite LTT over the standard offerings from Beretta? For starters, there are several different improvements made by Langdon Tactical, giving the end user the choice of which tier and price point is best. The 92 Elite can be purchased in a full-sized, Centurion model, or a compact-sized model. Each model has different options to choose from. The LTT trigger job is one of the biggest improvements to the 92 platform, giving the pistol a smooth double-action pull and a very crisp single-action pull that rivals any high-end 1911 trigger. An optimized trigger bar also shortens the reset to nearly nothing. The NP3 coating option adds a level of lubricity to the parts that make every pull of the trigger feel like things are sliding on glass. This coating is applied to the internal springs, the optimized trigger bar, magazine release, guide rod, hammer, essentially every internal part that isn’t the barrel or frame. Even the magazines are coated in NP3, which slide out of the pistol in such a way as to make reloading even faster. And finally, the carry bevel option is an intensive process, smoothing out all external surfaces on the slide and frame, beveling the magazine well, and eliminating any snag points on the pistol to ensure a smooth draw from a holstered position.
Here is a list of the different packages offered for the 92 Elite LTT.
Elite LTT with the LTT trigger job
Elite LTT with LTT trigger job and Spartan Sights
Elite LTT with LTT trigger job and NP3 coating
Elite LTT with LTT trigger job, NP3 coating, and Spartan Sights
Elite LTT with Carry Bevel (which includes the LTT trigger job and NP3 coating)
Elite LTT with Carry Bevel (with LTT trigger job and NP3 coating) and Spartan Sights
The end user also gets to choose from three different hammer spring weights to customize the feel of the pistol even more. On top of that (no pun intended) is an option for an RDO cut, or Red Dot Optic cut into the top of the frame. By doing the RDO cut, Langdon Tactical actually alters the internals of the 92 Elite, as the rounded frame makes it somewhat difficult to seat an optic. Langdon fixed all that, cutting the frame in such a way that higher sights give the shooter the ability to co-witness sights to the red dot optic of their choosing.
Is the Beretta 92 Elitee LTT Worth the Cost?
But is it worth it? All of these extra upgrades put a much higher price tag on a pistol that can retail for half the price in a stock configuration. In a word, yes. The standard Beretta 92 or M9 is a perfectly fine pistol, capable of always being a very reliable pistol. But comparing a base model 92 to the perfection achieved by Langdon Tactical is like comparing a new four-door electric Ford Mustang to the Shelby Cobra GT 500. They are both Mustangs, kinda. But not really. The best sales pitch for the 92 Elite LTT is the fact that every single user review for each model of 92 Elite LTT on the Langdon Tactical website is a five-star review. Not 4.5, not 4.9, but 5 stars across the board.
So, what's the downside, if there is one? I’ve only found one. After shooting my Centurion model with the LTT trigger job and NP3 coating, shooting any other pistol afterward is just flat-out disappointing. There is no better trigger feel on the market, beyond maybe a high-end Staccato, than a Beretta that’s been given the Langdon Tactical treatment. Having had much time and experience with an M9 on my hip in many austere environments, the pistol the Army issued me is nowhere close to the performance, feel, and finish that the 92 Elite LTT offers. It is a pistol that is both a pleasure to shoot at the range and one that I would trust my life on if ever needed. The Beretta 92 has a long history of being a proven combat pistol, but the 92 Elite LTT is as close to perfect as the platform can get.
