No, not really. This Bell Helicopter patent might suggest to some that the
company is returning its roots as a manufacturer of fixed-wing aircraft, but
company officials say they simply file patents anytime one of their engineers
comes up with a good idea. This was one
of those ideas. 
Basically, even though these drawing might seem to be reminiscent
of some sort of vertical take-off and landing flying-wing strike aircraft, Bell
says it is no such thing--it's merely a patent for a new type of control system.
But it would be pretty awesome if they actually built something like this. 
Nonetheless, it does look a lot like some of the concepts
being looked at for a recently launched Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) X-plane project. Basically, DARPA wants to build a machine that
hovers better than a helicopter but could fly much faster--300 knots to as high
400 knots.
However, DARPA says it wants something radically different from anything that has come before, so whatever folks come up with will likely be quite different from this.
My colleague Zach wrote about this a few weeks ago. Also here is a link to the patent.
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