I even have the Osprey book on the HAWK series. But no mention of the purpose of the control panel stand that comes with the missile kit. Is it meant to be some manual override?
You’ll need to provide more information . . .
KL
It’s the Launcher Control, obviously. 
It’s on the earlier M78 series launchers, not the M192 series I thought originally.
I’m not finding a mounting tripod in the manuals.
Given the function, it can clearly be located closer to the launcher than 200 feet (5.7 feet in 1/35) that the other component requires, but it wouldn’t be set-up for a ready-to-fire launcher.
KL
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The Mother of All Dioramas …
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Yes I meant that. But somebody already provided the answer. Thanks.
I posted those images to clarify Your question so that someone else could come up with an answer.
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Osprey books are hardly comprehensive references, and hardly references at all. As one author notes:
"Osprey authors live and die by the word count. Deliver within word count or your manuscript is rejected and gets returned for revision. Some variation is accepted. Stay within 500 words of the contracted word count and the editors are happy.
“A New Vanguard has a word count of 16,000. The guidelines call for 2,000 to be allocated to plate descriptions and 1,600 for photo captions. That leaves 12,400 for the main body. I reserve 400 for my introduction. This leaves between 3,600 and 3,700 words for each section. Normally I allocate 3,700 to two sections and 3,600 to a third. (How much depends upon the book. In this case, I initially allocated 3,700 words to Design and Development, with Operational History getting 3,600.)”
Now 16,000 words is about 32 single-spaced pages. The Wikipedia article on the HAWK is 6,000 words. By way of comparison, the official history of the M730 Chaparral SAM, a much less complex system, is over 200 single-spaced pages. FineScale Modeler articles are typically 750 to 2,500 words, so an Osprey book has about the same content as an issue of FSM, minus the ads and new product blurbs.
ONV’s essentially will tell you what something is and what it looks like. For a simple, short-lived item like the 2.36-inch bazookas, they can be pretty good, but for something like “T-54/55 Medium Tanks” they can barely cover the various cupolas and turret hatches.
KL
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I see Osprey books as a good introduction to the subject if you have little or no knowledge about it already, but for anything you do have somewhat of a library about already, they’re not usually worth buying.
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I have their book on the Central American wars of the 1980’s. It showed what the various nations had (mostly clothing and equipment from the USA, with some local changes), but it did not show how the actual fighting went, not even an outline.