Historically Ross has always been a good journalist. I would like to think he vets his sources
Maybe in the past, but I think he has shown himself to be an ardent believer in various UFO conspiracies. In this tread, there is long interview with Coulthart about UFO cover ups and even includes his claim that there is a crashed UFO so big the government simply constructed a building over it to conceal it. He knows about it, but of course he can't share the details yet:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ross-coultharts-huge-buried-ufo.13040/
It's not that I don't. I just lack proof that it comes from that. I'm trying to move us all away from the he said, she said stuff in this field. I think there's a chance, but along with Grusch's testimony, I don't buy it as proof until it is officially confirmed.
I don't think we are just going with the "he said" that we like better, I'm not, but rather trying to work out a bit of a puzzle.
We were presented with a convoluted 2nd, 3rd or even 4th hand story from Coulthart about some guy's great uncle's co-worker seeing or working on a UFO at Area 51. The patch was presented as something given to EE&G employees that worked at Area 51 and therefore was offered as corroboration of the Great Uncle's employment there. In addition to a photo of the patch, Coulthart claimed that his source also provided photos of his great uncle's coworkers, whom Coulthart claimed to recognize, but this photo and the names were not giving out, so we only have Coulthart's word for it. All we had was the photo of the patch.
Some sleuthing showed that the exact same patch had been offered on eBay by someone calling themselves "lockheedskunk117" or 'skunk for short. On the various eBay offerings, 'skunk claimed it was from a reverse engineering group that HE WAS PART OF. It was HIS patch.
Meanwhile, someone on Twitter/X we call Billy, was claiming to be Coulthart's source with the story of snapping a secret picture of the patch that belonged to his great Uncle. As it was the same patch that was on eBay, it's highly likely that Billy and 'skunk are the same person with differing stories about the patch.
Metabunk member
@Duke is also a moderator on the Dreamland forum and knowing that a lot of ex-Area51 people are part of that, he asked about the patch. The consensus was that it likely had something to do with a radar group based on the iconography. It's known that EE&G was a contractor at Area 51 and that they operated various radar installations in and around Area 51, including some captured and/or reconstructed Soviet systems that can be construed as "reverse engineering".
One relatively new member of Dreamland produced a photo of the same patch, though not the one that Coulthart and 'skunk had, along with some vague claims. Case closed? Certainly not. In my dealings with Duke here on Metabunk and in private I find him to be levelheaded and reliable. If he is also a mod on Dreamland and that forum is full of real Area 51 employees, I would think it would be hard to show up and be a posser there for very long.
Nevertheless, the person with the photo of the patch has only been on Dreamland for a short while, so he could be faking it. I even suggested, half joking, that he and Billy and 'skunk are all the same person. He has a stash of these patches and is trying to bolster their price by "leaking" the photo and story to Coulthart and maybe showing up on Dreamland claiming they are real Area 51 patches. Billy/skunk has told multiple stories about the patch and has been misleading in his selling of the Jordan autographed ticket stub, so he's not a reliable source. Something Coulthart, a supposed investigative journalist should have picked up on.
As of now, it appears likely that the patch probably had something to do with radar installations, something EE&G was known to have worked on at Area 51. Not based on one "he said", but on a number of things.