BANGOR – The Federal Aviation Administration this week tapped a Virginia-based firm to provide added security at the control tower at Bangor International Airport and about a dozen other Northeast airports.

FAA officials signed the $15 million, one-year contract Tuesday with MVM Inc. of McLean, Va., to provide 24-hour armed and unarmed patrols around the air traffic control towers including the BIA tower, according to a company spokeswoman.

FAA officials reached Thursday would not confirm the exact location of the added security.

The extra security comes in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on America, in which terrorists hijacked four jetliners, crashing two into the New York City’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and one into a field in rural Pennsylvania.

“Right now, airport security is an important issue and the FAA is working on increasing the security in all of its facilities, not just in the airport sites,” Dario Marquez, chairman and chief executive officer at MVM, said in a statement.

MVM’s contract with the FAA includes locations in New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The facilities, which include long-range radar sites and control towers, will be patrolled by MVM officers seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

The new restrictions come amid tightened security in and around all the nation’s airports, with armed National Guardsmen posted in screening areas and more intensive and random searches of boarding passengers and their luggage.

BIA acting director Rebecca Hupp said this week that any new patrols around the FAA tower on the airport grounds would be above and beyond the already tight security around the tower, accessible only through the heavily guarded Maine Air National Guard base.

Additional government agencies under contract with MVM include the Department of Justice, U.S. Marshal Service and the General Services Administration.