@gums - your posts are real gems, thanks for your insight. I have read them with great interest back in the AF447 days.
Back to the subject, if this Captain was the PF, do you have any idea what type of training he would have received in the Indonesian Air Force? I would think that a fighter pilot would regularly be on the edge of the flight envelopes, but perhaps this is not true with a 2nd-world Air Force? Perhaps his training was limited to bombing runs and BVR interception?
I can't shake the notion that the Captain should have been someone with a chance to recover the plane, having familiarity with FBW and sidestick controls. He certainly wouldn't have 'stirred-the-muck' like the AF447 inputs.
Perhaps one question is, is this another story of the THS going into NU and then the crew forgetting about it when the automatics cut out?