Russia's Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has presented video of the country's new Su-57 fighter—you can read our full analysis on this often misunderstood aircraft here—launching a new cruise missile from its internal weapons bay. This is the first video we know of not only of this missile being tested, but also of the Su-57s weapons bays in use.

In his statement, Shoigu mentions the Russian Ministry of Defense's large effort to test and evaluate new weapons on the Syrian battlefield, but it's not clear if this launch took place over the war-torn country or not. He says the test occurred in February, which is the same month a pair of Su-57s briefly deployed to Syria under puzzling circumstances. That excursion lasted less than two days and what the aircraft were doing there and why they returned home so quickly remains a mystery. It is possible that the Su-57s were there to test the missile on real targets, or the test could have just as easily occurred on ranges within Russia's own borders.

The missile being launched appears to be the Kh-59MK2, a standoff weapon designed especially for the Su-57 and the confines of its two ventral weapons bays. The subsonic cruise missile has a modular, rectangular design that incorporates some stealthy features and coatings. It navigates using INS with embedded GPS (GLONASS/Navstar). An infrared seeker is used for terminal homing, allowing it to hit moving targets, have its final point of impact fine-tuned for maximum effect, or to be retargeted in real-time. The ability to loiter over a target area is another possibility based on the capabilities of similar designs.

A two-way data-link provides man-in-the-loop control between the missile and the launching aircraft all the way till impact. It would also be capable of hitting targets autonomously, at least stationary ones, albeit without the exacting precision that man-in-the-loop control provides. Range and payload estimates vary widely, but it's likely to be able to reach targets at least 150 miles away while carrying a 500lb warhead. The modular nature of the design may allow for multiple configurations, such as larger fuel sections to be swapped for smaller warhead sections. But basically this thing is something between Israel's Delilah and the U.S. Navy's SLAM-ER.