Kinophile

That brilliant mastermind Putin finally succeeded in forcing Sweden into NATO.  A very stable genius!
 

Imagine how his boss feels.  This was a workday after all.

Actually, the above is out of date now.  

TLDR: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken welcomes Sweden to NATO and he and the Swedish Prime Minister both say some nice words.

I don't think a flechette round is going to do anything that your basic 5.56/7.62 isn't- the problem looks more like drones are very difficult to hit, rather than current ammunition doesn't do enough damage.
It's got me wondering though- how big do jammers need to be to be effective? Could you stick one inside a 40mm grenade with a parachute and bloop them off into the sky a la instant EW barrage balloons?

I am honestly amazed that anything I write causes anyone to think about anything “all day”, but that must be the pressure of Canadian culture.
I think “unmanned” as a phenomenon is the continuing emergence of something larger within warfare.  What you describe here would be big enough to drive significant re-thinking of how we wage war.  Since the beginning of this war, I have noted how many really fundamental concepts are being impacted: Mass (density, concentration of force), Offensive, Surprise, Connections, Speed (space and time) and Friction, to name several.  These definitely signal a shift in the character of warfare.  A change to the fundamental capability of infantry is enormous - on par with shifts we have seen in the last 200 years.
But I honestly think it may be bigger.  Most military technology has been developed to better project or protect human energy in the use of violence to shape human will.  Rocks, spears, bow/arrow, horses, armor, chariots, walls, siege weapons, guns, artillery, air power and seapower - all designed around the human being.  However, as Clausewitz (and others) have argued, these are all shifts in the “character” of warfare, not its fundamental nature.
A shift in the nature of warfare has occurred at least twice in human history.  The first time was when we invented civilization and made warfare an extension of human politics.  Before, in pre-civilization, warfare occurred for what could be considered micro-political reasons but was also occurring for many other reason as well, the largest being survival.  By upscaling warfare..in fact as a direct result as a pre-condition to upscaling itself, warfare changed to become an “act of violence to force political will”.  Political will changed with civilization and so did war.  
The second time the nature of warfare changed was in 1945.  The creation and operationalization of nuclear weapons changed the nature of warfare forever.  The nature of warfare became “an act of viable violence to force political will”.  War became bounded by the nuclear equation.  Unlimited violence meant mutual destruction, so we were forced to view all war through a different lens. This new nature of warfare exists to this day.
Now we are staring down the barrel of something else.  And what this is exactly, I am not sure.  We are essentially seeing technology augmenting and replacing human cognitive processing power.  This has been happening for centuries but “unmanned” by definition is about replacing human beings.  The larger question with “unmanned” is how far down this road does that replacement go?  At a very high expression, unmanned can become a WMD and create a new mutual destruction spin.  Even further down that road we are looking at warfare becoming a blend of “viable violence to force hybrid political will”.  What “unmanned” really is about is creating and weaponizing artificial-human capabilities.  We can see things like “synthetic mass”, “virtual manoeuvre” and of course the autonomy debate.
So, “how far?” Is quickly followed by “how fast?”  And based on this war…damned fast.  It took roughly 2 million years for the first shift in the nature of warfare.  Another 10k to get to the second.  And now it looks like we could be at a single century for the next one.  This is not to say that humans will be left out of warfare completely, but how we wage war shapes (and is shaped by) why and what.  I suspect we will see an evolution as you note, towards human effort focused on creating “unmanned superiority”, yet this will include more than explodey stuff.
At its fullest expression we get into things like predictive analytics that actually work.  This puts one at temporal advantage over an opponent.  We see AI commanders, maybe?  AI staff is already happening.  I strongly suspect there will be a race to see who can get the most unmanned, the fastest.  I honestly do not know where this ends, but one thing this war is teaching me is that this entire thing looks and feels real.  What we have seen in the last two years alone has been stunning.  The fact that the character of warfare is changing is really moving past a debate.  What we do not know is whether there will be a shift in war’s nature.  But I am getting a weird feeling about the whole damned business at this point.

Cause someone needs to keep changing the batteries in all the hi-tech kit. 

Because , as Bullethead used to say, it ain't over till a grunt sticks a flag on it.
Drones are cool, and all, but like aircraft they can't seize *and*hold* terrain, regardless of season, weather or terrain.

I've been thinking about this post most of the day, and keep coming back to "Neat. Now what?"
Which got me thinking about how other step changes in military capability were handled. The two obvious ones that come to mind are tanks in WWII, and airpower during the Cold War. Now, clearly, in both cases they existed early, but they only really became effective/worrisome/"game-changing" some decades after their entree to the battlefield.
For the infantry, in both cases, the response became basically the same: very small infantry units became fully capable of anti-ing the other thing, either anti-tank or anti-air.
During WWII anti-tank rifles, bazookas, fausts, shrecks, Piats and hearty grenades gave platoons and sections an ability to defend against or attack against tanks, pretty explicitly at the detriment to the nominal role of the infantry, which was to oppose and defeat enemy infantry. That trend was significantly enhanced during second half of last century with things like RPGs and M-72s. This is at the point now where with weapons like Javelin tanks perhaps have more to fear from infantry than the vice versa, even though lugging Javelin around is a royal PITA especially for light infantry.
The introduction of air power, and especially effective CAS, started us on the road to the fully illuminated battlefield, where nowhere is safe and to be seen is to die. During WWII the only real counter that the infantry had was to dig on, or hide, or both. But during the Cold War a lot of effort went into MANPADS, resulting in the Stinger in the 1980s and with other systems following soon after. Just like their anti tank weapons, lugging around anti-aircraft missiles is a PITA which detracts from the nominal role of engaging enemy infantry, not to mention the drain on budgets and training schedules. But on the other hand now every platoon and section is capable of destroying any tank or aircraft that wanders into it's little tactical AO. And once the air and armour battle is won - either locally or globally - then the rest is just mopping up. The degradation of the infantry platoon and section's ability in the infantry-battle doesn't really matter, since while that bit remains hard and unpleasant, it is incredibly harder and more unpleasant in the absence of either air or armoured support.
So you can probably see where this is going.
Assuming UAS remains in play (and why wouldn't it?), then the role of infantry platoons and sections will change again. Instead of being little nodes of anti-tank and anti-air goodness,with some residual anti-infantry capability, they will become little anti-UAS nodes, with the weapons, training, mindset and purpose to defeat enemy UAS in their local area, and also protect or project friendly UAS capability around themselves. If an enemy tank or aircraft turns up then the section or platoon mightn't be able to deal with it themselves, but they will be networked to someone who can - guns, missiles, friendly armour or air, or friendly UAS. And they'll still, you know, carry rifles. Mainly out of habit and tradition, as well as giving the NCOs something to inspect every day. But most of their weaponry, and sensors, and just the general claggage they're carting about will be geared towards winning the UAS fight, because winning that will mean that the rest is just mopping up.
In other words, the infantry will be able to concentrate physically and cognitively on the UAS battle because it won't be their role any more to win the tank, infantry, or local airspace battle.

Lol
 

Lol
 

Not the strongest reasoning but... 
 

Absolutely. Ships live and die by their keel state. Its literally their spine so once you stress, bend, fracture or generally **** with their keel then things go very screwy extremely quickly, especially in sea state 5+.

A usv with a 1T warhead that can handle SS5+ and hit the target head on, from underneath, as it mounts over a wave, could take out almost any ship. Not necessarily sink it outright (although definitely possible on smaller ships) but combined with the relentless ongoing wave action it could quickly escalate a nominally contained damage into a nightmare of propagating structural failure, from the keel up.
Glub glub, bottom of the tub.

Lol
 

Well said. We're not going to beat fast, light and cheap with slow, heavy and expensive. Examples abound in history - battleships v airplanes being the closest example. 

Well said. We're not going to beat fast, light and cheap with slow, heavy and expensive. Examples abound in history - battleships v airplanes being the closest example. 

Lol
 

Well said. We're not going to beat fast, light and cheap with slow, heavy and expensive. Examples abound in history - battleships v airplanes being the closest example. 

Lol
 

Or UKRAINIAN floating objects!

Unidentified Floating  Objects!

The disappearances have usually been accompanied by bright lights and loud noises. Could this be UFOs?

Lol
 

Lol
 

Lol
 

I was thinking the exact same. Turning speed is.. Ok... Straight run speed... Is ok. 
Bring on the kamikaze hydrofoils, I say. 
These things could easily be hit by a ATGM, hell salvo-ing RPG7s would be useful. 
I was noticing the LMG rounds seemed to ricochet off a lot. I'm sure some penetrated but the sloping form and hull thickness seems quite adequate. 
What really did the trick here, I suspect, was a combination of the number of maneuvering USVs with the poor training /readiness of the ship and CIWS.