Is it that you can find USC blocks independently, but they're linked to/secured by the parent chain? IOW, you don't need to win a block on the parent chain to get USC?
If this is the case, then you'd be mad not to merge mine... although it does sound a little fiddly for early adopters. I've read this thread through once, will have to do it again later I think.

Yes, you can find USC blocks with LTC as parent, without winning a block on LTC (since the difficulty of LTC is higher than that of USC).
Multiple people are currently in the process of writing software to make merged mining easier.