THE British army’s new recruitment campaign aimed at young people is being condemned by critics as “patronising” and “desperate.”

The military has unveiled controversial posters and videos targeting “snowflakes, selfie addicts, class clowns, phone zombies, and me, me, millennials” aged 16 to 25.

The campaign’s slogan, “Your Army Needs You,” is a play on Lord Kitchener’s “Your Country Needs You” recruitment adverts from the First World War.

In what sounds like an attempt to recruit drone operators, one campaign poster says “Binge gamers – your army needs you, and your drive.”

An accompanying video shows a young man staying awake all night playing a violent video game, with a voiceover saying “Stamina, don’t underestimate it.”

The campaign comes as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is facing a recruitment crisis after outsourcing the task to Capita, who have failed to deliver.

Veterans for Peace UK criticised the MoD on Twitter, saying the adverts “won't work,” and the money would be better invested in accommodation and pay for serving soldiers.

The Peace Pledge Union also spoke out, saying that the campaign “patronises young people.”

Their spokesperson Symon Hill asked: “Have we learnt nothing in 100 years?

“This campaign is using World War I imagery and once again generals and government ministers are urging young people to volunteer to join an organisation in which they are expected to kill and die when someone more powerful than them orders them to.”

Mr Hill said it was a “desperate” attempt to meet recruitment targets using “bizarre and misleading” adverts.

He praised young people for realising that “armed forces cannot solve the world's problems” and said “the low levels of army recruitment are something to celebrate.”

The reference to Kitchener has proved particularly controversial.

He was decorated as Lord Kitchener of Khartoum after machine gunning dead 10,000 poorly armed Sudanese soldiers on the outskirts of their capital at Omdurman. The British only lost 48 men.

Professor Hakim Adi, an African history expert at Chichester University, told the Star that: “Kitchener can be considered the ‘butcher of Omdurman’ involved in a war of aggression in the Sudan that William Morris, Eleanor Marx and the Socialist League strongly opposed.”

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson described the new recruitment campaign as “a powerful call to action.”