A very civilian friend of mine assembles office furniture, cubicles and does light construction and painting in the green zone of bagdad and other high security locales around the world. He always makes $1000 per day and is gone for 1 to 3 months at a time and then has about the same amount of time off. He was able to land the job due to family in the pentagon.

I would not consider doing aviation in the fertile crescent for anything less.