The sage advice has always been to give a very wide berth indeed to any company which attempts such a strategy! Their pay and T&S must be as least as good as on offer from any other organisation. If they think that 'topping up' a military pension with low pay is acceptable, then people need to disabuse them of that idea PDQ!
Afraid it's not just Ascent - this is rife within MOD - especially in those organisations and agencies with fairly specialist roles which employ a mix of civil servants and military and rely in part on ex-mil personnel for their knowledge and operational experience. I know of one organisation who a few years back was trying to entice officers at their option point with a salary in the low-mid 20k on the basis that they had a pension to top up their salary. It wouldn't be so bad apart from 1. if it isn't illegal to base a salary on an individual's other income sources to save cash, it's immoral and 2. it does nothing to encourage those people that do join to put the effort in or go the extra mile when doing the exact same role as the mil guy sitting next to them for half the pay.
I'm with Beags and MGD on this one - any organsiation that has a personnel strategy based on those principles deserves to fail.