Back in February, at the HIT Show in Vicenza (northern Italy), the Tanfoglio company provided visitors with a sneak preview of their latest service and defensive pistol, dubbed the Force Esse (“Esse” being the Italian pronounce of the letter S, as in “Striker-fired”), their first striker-fired handgun, fully developed in-house.

The pistol officially debuted at the 2019 edition of the IWA OutdoorClassics in Nuremberg (Germany), and the Company already announced to have secured a substantial contract to supply the Force Esse to a yet undisclosed law enforcement agency in the Far East.

The Tanfoglio Force Esse is built around a redesigned polymer frame – the same found on the Company’s own Force Plus hammer-fired service pistol; the barrel is 112 mm / 4.4” long and cold-hammer forged out of UNI 42 CrMo 4 steel, while the slide is CNC machined out of UNI 18 CrMo 4 and is notable for its very low profile and for its front and rear slide serrations optimized to be racked by holding it with the hollow between your thumb and index finger.

The design and dimensions of the slide were also conceived to maintain the bore axis closer to the shooter’s hand position.

The Tanfoglio Force Esse is 20,8 cm / 8.1” long overall for a total weight of 840 grams (29.63 oz) when empty. A pre-cocked striker-fired pistol, it offers a fairly long trigger pre-run followed by a crisp release, similar to that of a hammer-fired single-action handgun. The overall trigger weight is set at about 2,5 kilograms (5.5 lbs). Other features of the Tanfoglio Force Esse include a Picatinny rail on the frame for tactical accessories, a set of LPA iron sights, and a frame-mounted manual safety.

All inner components of the Tanfoglio Force Esse semi-automatic pistol are CNC-machined or injection-molded (MIM) out of NiCrMo steel for superior resistance. The Force Esse pistol is chambered in 9mm Luger and feeds through double-stack metal magazines offering an overall capacity of 15 rounds.