Have a drone? You’re going to have to register it with the government by mid-December.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday announced a new task force that will develop recommendations for a registration process for drones.

“It’s really hard to follow the rules if you don’t know what the rules are and if the rules apply to you,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a news conference Monday. “People registering their drones will be exposed to rules and the reasons for those rules.”

Registering drones would force drone operators to go through basic education of drone safety, Foxx said. It would also help the government identify potentially irresponsible pilots.

“If unmanned aircraft operators should break the rules, there should be consequences,” he said. “But there can be no accountability if the person breaking the rules cannot be identified.”

The rules come at a time when drones — and drone crashes — are causing increasing concern. A drone made by Chinese company DJI crashed near the White House earlier this year. San Bernardino County supervisors agreed to offer a $75,000 reward for information in tracking down drone operators who they say interfered with firefighters during three major wildfires in California this summer.

“Finding the drone has not been as much of a problem as finding the person who is using that drone,” Foxx said. “The registration is designed to close that loophole.”

Pilots say “close call” incidents between drones and other aircraft pose one of the biggest threats; nearly 700 “close call incidents” have been reported between January and August of this year. But in most of those incidents, the drone itself was never recovered.

Drone registration wouldn’t help solve the issue of drones interfering with manned aircraft when the drone is never recovered, said Logan Campbell, co-founder of drone consulting firm Aerotas.

“This is targeted toward a select few high-profile incidents,” he said.

“ “It’s full of good intentions to make the national airspace safer ... but right now it also has the potential to be another crippling blow to the industry.” ” — Logan Campbell, co-founder of drone consulting firm Aerotas

At first, registration would essentially operate on an honor system. And there’s no “drone police,” so it’s unclear how drone registration would be enforced in the future.

“I think many, if not most, users will comply because of the attention we are giving to this issue,” Foxx said. “There are penalties associated with using these devices in the national airspace.”

But not everyone is confident users have a good incentive to register their drones.

“A lot of hobbyists likely won’t do it, and let registration lapse,” said Jonathan Rupprecht, a Florida-based lawyer who focuses on drones. “It’s going to cost a lot more money. It’s creating a lot more headaches and paperwork backlogs.”

As of now, local law enforcement don't have authority to penalize drone operators who fly an unregistered drone. Foxx said that the U.S. Department of Justice would be the prosecuting agency for now.

One million people are expected to purchase a drone this holiday season, and there are already hundreds of thousands of drones estimated in the airspace. DJI, the world’s largest drone maker, sold about 400,000 units in 2014 alone, according to Forbes.

“There is some truth to when you require registration that people have to become aware of the rules,” Campbell said. “They’re also making it easier to punish people.”

For now, it’s unclear which types of drones will have to be registered, what the process will be like, and what punishment and enforcement will be like.

“This announcement raises a lot more questions than it does give answers,” Campbell said. “It’s full of good intentions to make the national airspace safer ... but right now it also has the potential to be another crippling blow to the industry.”

Foxx said the new task force will advise the government as to whether certain types of drones should be exempt from registration due to low safety risk, such as small drones or drones classified as toys.

Brendan Schulman, DJI’s vice president of policy and legal affairs, has been advocating for a “microrule,” in which small drones, such as the Phantom that his company produces, be exempt from most regulation.

“It will be critical to draw distinctions between different types of drones so that any future registration system does not become unworkable,” Schulman said in an email to MarketWatch. “Weight is likely the most straightforward characteristic, with many countries already having concluded that the lowest weight categories don’t require any regulation at all.”

The task force is expected to deliver its report by Nov. 20, and Foxx said he expects rules in place by the middle part of December. That’s lightening speed for an agency that has already missed numerous deadlines for drone regulations. Congress separately asked the FAA to come up with rules governing commercial drone use in 2012, setting a Sept. 30, 2015, deadline. The FAA doesn’t anticipate fulfilling that until June 2016.

“We also want to ramp up enforcement and we will be able to instill accountability,” Foxx said. “There’s still a lot of work to do. This is not the whole solution, this is just a part of it.”