TEL AVIV — While the news media and U.S. intelligence community continues to focus on North Korea’s missile capabilities, one expert warned on Sunday that we are ignoring two North Korean satellites currently orbiting the U.S. that could be used to carry out a devastating electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

Such a “surprise” attack could paralyze the U.S. electrical grid and critical civilian infrastructure, resulting in the death of large numbers of Americans.

So warned Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Congressional Task Force on National and Homeland Security and chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission.

Pry was speaking on this reporter’s Sunday night talk radio show, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” broadcast on terrestrial radio on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia and online.

“We should not be tolerating the North Korean satellites that are orbiting over our country. There are two of them. And the intelligence community is still silent about those,” said Pry.

The expert was referring to the KMS 3-2 and KMS-4 earth observation satellites launched by North Korea in April 2012 and February 2016 respectively. The KSM-4 was launched one month after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test, prompting a debate about sanctions at the United Nations Security Council.

“The EMP Commission has officially been warning about those satellites especially now that the (intelligence) community admits that North Korea can miniaturize warheads,” Pry stated. “Our argument all along has been that they could make weapons small enough to put on those satellites that pass over the United States on the optimum trajectory for an EMP attack on North America.”

“And they would obviously be a basis for a surprise EMP attack if North Korea wants to commit aggression against South Korea. Or to blackmail us if we were going to intervene to deliver on our security guarantees for Japan, South Korea or the Pacific.”

Pry said the satellites are orbiting at the “optimum height for putting an EMP field over all 48 contiguous United States.”

Pry warned that deploying satellites for the purpose of an EMP option against the U.S. “is exactly the kind of thing that he (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) would do. It would make strategic sense to do it. We do know that Kim Jong Un is a risk-taker.”

Pry surmised that the North Koreans may be utilizing the satellites for an attack plan pioneered by the Soviets during the Cold War to attack the U.S. with an EMP as part of a larger surprise assault aimed at crippling the U.S. military.

Unlike the Soviet plan, Pry opined, the North Koreans may be seeking to use an EMP attack to target “our electrical grid and our civilian critical infrastructure. And they only need one weapon to do that.”

Pry continued:

The North Koreans basically I think got this idea from the Russians. They had called it the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. … The idea was that you would use a peaceful space launch vehicle to launch what would appear to look like a peaceful satellite. And it would even fly away from us on a South Polar trajectory so that it wasn’t coming toward the United States. But it would really be a nuclear weapon. And the reason it would come up from the south is because we don’t have any ballistic missile early warning radars facing the south and no interceptors. We are blind and defenseless from the South. The first thing we would know is when the [North Korean] satellite detonated at high altitude over the United States at about three hundred kilometers which is the orbit of these satellites. The optimum height for putting an EMP field over all 48 contiguous United States. In the Soviet plan, the idea was to paralyze command and control, our bombers, our missiles so that they would then be able to launch a massive disarming strike that would then come across the North Pole and strike us. The North Koreans don’t have enough missiles to do something like that, and their object is not to paralyze our strategic forces as much as it would be to kill our people.

Pry faulted the U.S. intelligence community for its supposed silence on the threat. “This is such an act of irresponsibility for both the intelligence community and … the mainstream media. To leave the American people pretty much in the dark about this. Because if we did get an international crisis where we were gearing up to intervene on our security guarantees it would be an enormous shock for people.”

He added: “People will be psychologically unprepared for that at all levels of the government from the president all the way down to the man on the street. So, the failure to at least talk about this possibility is actually helping our enemies put us in a situation where they could achieve their political and military goals.”

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook