Would an engineer be paid that much?
A licensed supervisor would be paid quite a bit more than that (around £50-55,000 if on shift with multiple types on his licence or around £40,000 if he was an ordinary "office" engineer) but of course he wouldn't get any pension at all until he retired at age 60+. Also the pension would be contributory with contributions deducted from salary. As for a sandpit job like Camp Bastion, wild horses wouldn't drag any of us there for less than £120,000 plus gratuity.
As an example of a tough civilian tour overseas, separated from home and family, a couple of years back I was working in Belgium on a contract that came out as £72,000 a year (if I'd worked a full year), but I had to pay for my own accommodation -
€900 a month = £720/mth = £8,640/yr. So it was worth £63,000 a year in for the inconvenience of being in darkest Brussels, up to my neck in beer and chocolate.
Unfortunately there's a dearth of opportunities as a civilian engineer these days and most of us are either on wage cuts or short time working; some on both.