Theres a lot of chatter about the Indian ships being poorly armed, I asked this question to my father who is an ex Navy man and seasoned on multiple destroyer classes - he said a bunch of things about our supposedly low VLS count which made sense (to me at-least). It has a lot to do with what school of thought the naval planners adhere to. In India we draw from mainly the Soviet Navy and the British Navy-
Soviet Naval doctrine was more around packing large volumes of missiles into launchers, sail into contested waters unload the sheer mass of ordinance and hope to dis-appear, primarily under the assumption that the US Navy will always have numeric superiority over the Soviets. Hence the overwhelming armament load
- This also has a bearing on crew comfort - More VLS cells means lesser room for crews, Soviet ship designs are notorious for packing crews like Sardines - 8 men to a small 8*8 feet room on the Petya Class (the worst ship, he said he has ever sailed on - and he was a young officer, Haha) . Because they don't intend to use them as blue water platforms with ships spending months at sea. Goal is to go out, hit as much as you can in a short span of time and return
- Having a lot of VLS cells can also be counterproductive, it increases the surface area of vulnerable parts of your ship, if you were to take the extreme case of a Kirov class battlecruisers, almost the entire fore part of the ship, is VLS systems, one missile hit or a stray shell hit would be the end of the ship.. the whole magazine would blow like the HMS Hudd did in WW2 - one massive boom and all over
The British on the other hand view themselves as a true blue water navy, the line of thought is that - if at war, expect to get hit as well, but hit back and aim to survive - survivability and crew comfort are paramount considerations rather. If you look at the Type 45, their Sylver A50 VLS is for Surface to Air roles with the Aster 15/30 missiles in tandem.. for the Anti Ship role they use 2 Quad Launchers of Harpoons.
Our ships lie somewhere in between, quite literally borrowing from both doctrines - 32 Cell VLS for the Baraks and a 16 cell VLS for the Brahmos, the Brahmos is intended to be fired in a 2 missile salvo and the Navy is confident that nothing the intended adversary has in its arsenal will survive a 2 missile salvo from the Brahmos. If by some miracle you manage to take down some 7-8 ships and survive - a replenishment vessel in the vicinity should be able to load you up fast enough.
Also you need to keep in mind the Brahmos costs a boat load to own . each unit costs 20 crore - adding another 8 Cell VLS costs 200 Cr
PS - Nonethless, some things about the Kamorta class do baffle me too!
