Except it has?
It was pretty common in the 1980's, actually. Object 299 had a VLS carrier, FAADS NLOS was going to be a M113A3 with a VLS battery, there were probably quite a few in Europe as well that are somewhat obscure, perhaps France had something of the nature. Pereh technically counts as a precursor to VLS tanks, too. People simply realized, like giraffes, that it was worse than putting them on a truck very quickly and actually deployed VLS artillery was palletized and placed on flatbeds. It's not a hard conclusion to come to. Even the giraffes themselves were replaced by Tiger attack helicopters or the Westland Apache because helicopters are more flexible and do the same job.
Archaic is perfect because it's a deprecated concept from an older era that is uncommon after new, more common things arrived.
IMI Jumper and Lockheed NLOS-LS, the Serbian ALAS and Russian Germes, and the Japanese Type 96 MPMS and US EFOG-M, are all carried on utility trucks rather than tracked, armored vehicles. There's no particular reason for a low signature BLOS system to be heavily armored. Missiles, especially cold launched cruise missiles of the low velocity and teeny engines used in FOGs, are incredibly difficult to track with orbital gunfire spotting, if possible at all. Not so with artillery howitzers or multiple rocket launchers, which can be detected from orbit by SBIRS and targeted by counterbattery fire, so the actual risk of counterbattery is pretty much nil.
I guess people in the '80's thought someone might be able to track the fiber cables or radio datalinks of VLS missiles with SARs or HF/DF idk.
Meanwhile, giraffes were just supposed to be cheaper attack helicopters because European armies couldn't afford enough Bo-105s or Westland Lynx to fill out the needs to have anti-tank battalions for divisions, and so they were going to use battalions of Leopard 1s and Challenger 1s converted to elevating mast tanks with TRIGAT instead. Then the Cold War ended, tons of money was freed up by downsizing, and people made Tiger HAP and Westland Apache was procured, solving the problem utterly.
It's not only archaic, it's so archaic it never even got produced in any real numbers. People simply realized it was a bad idea long before the bending of steel occurred, and so actual VLS systems went from being self propelled armored vehicles with tank-like protection in theory to just trucks with cargo beds or PLS sleds in practice.
Even before that, the use of VLS systems by ground troops shifted from self moving platforms to simple air-dropped pods of 463Ls with a dozen missiles, as was the case in Small Unit Operations and Lightning Over Water/RAND's adaptation of the former, because it was realized that full track armored vehicles are unnecessary and arguably worse than static mounts or light utility vehicles..
