control "feel" and mach versus stall
For the subsonic wing shape you can "feel" buffet and "stiffening" of the stick at the critical mach, whether via artificial control stick mechanisms or just "in the seat of your pants". You can also have control reversal for the ailerons, as the shock waves are messing around with the pressures that normally result in roll right for right stick and vice versa. Some planes have a pronounced nose-down "tuck", and the only way out is to reduce power and deploy spoilers or speed brakes.
The average "heavy pilot" without military experience rarely sees this. Additionally, the military planes usually have a greater structural margin per the design specification. So we could "push the envelope" in a way you would never try in a heavy. I only exceeded the Vne once, but the jet was robust and my biggest clue was that with a great amount of back stick the thing was not moving as much as I expected. Glanced at the airspeed and sure enough, I was 40 or 50 knots above the placard ) gotta admit that I was pulling off a heavily defended target and was getting hosed down big time by bad guys). You can't do that in a modern airliner, that is, gradually recover from the overspeed without ripping the wings off.
As Doze and others have repeatedly stated, most military and commercial heavies have not had the traditional control "feel" since the 50's. Move the hydraulic valve with the stick/yoke and the pressures went to the control actuators. Clever engineers used feedback devices to "stiffen" the controls at high "q" and to limit the control movement, while providing a sense of the Cessna/Champ/Cub "feel". Big deal.
Comparing control "feel" with the military FBW systems is not fair. We flew at AoA's and speeds and gees not applicable to the heavies. We flew by our own "feel", and the FBW confusers allowed us to ask the jet to do as much as it could without being too worried about stalling or exceeding the structural limits.
One way to "help" the pilots with the FBW system is to employ some of the PC game technology and have forces applied to the controls according to the flight conditions. In other words, use actual pressures detected upon the control surfaces themselves to be "felt" by the pilots. Can also use basic air data like dynamic pressure as a baseline - go fast, stiff stick, slow down and get sloppy and need more control displacement.
enuf war stories, and I continue to read the report again and again, as well as the neat posts here.