  Since the advent of bitcoin in 2008, the concept of a blockchain has widely
spread. Besides crypto currencies and trading activities, there is a wide range
of potential application areas where blockchains are providing the main
building block for secure solutions. From a technical point of view, a
blockchain involves a set of cryptographic primitives to provide a data
structure with security and trust properties. However, a blockchain is not a
golden bullet. It may be well suited for some problems, but often an
inappropriate data structure for many applications. In this paper, we review
the high-level concept of a blockchain and present possible applications in the
military field. Our review is targeted to readers with little prior domain
knowledge as a support to decide where it makes sense to use a blockchain and
where a blockchain might not be the right tool at hand.
