And the Airbus control laws are designed by a committee of engineers over a period of several months.
I am sure that the engineers were thoroughly conscientious, but it definitely looks that the pilots
did not know what airplane they were trying to fly -- well the word
Alternate was pronounced, but there was no learned disquisition in the cockpit on the implications of
Alt 2B, even though I am sure the committee of engineers spent several days talking it over.
Engineers and programmers can get a bit carried away with themselves when getting into recondite corners -- here we see a proliferation of flight laws and a crew unprepared for Alt 2B combined with UAS at high altitude.
Applying KISS retroactively, the pilots would have known what airplane they were flying if Normal Law was flown with a touch pad and the stick, rudders and trim wheel were reserved for Direct Law
In a previous thread I mentioned that the VSI and altitude displays did not alert the crew to the descent rate problem until the 10,000' digit dropped off the altitude readout -- i.e. the readout went from 5 digits to four. Only at that time did the crew verbalise the altitude.