A theory is presented which considers either rotational equilibrium or nonequilibrium rate processes in continuous wave (CW) hydrogen fluoride (HF) or deuterium fluoride (DF) lasers. The theory is used to predict zero power gain and power spectral distributions and comparisons are made with experimental observations. The DF reaction kinetics model was found to give predictions of zero power gain which were closely correlated with experimental data. However, the HF reaction kinetics were found to produce radically different zero power gains than experimentally observed. Modifications to the reaction rages of certain vibrational-translational and vibrational-vibrational energy exchange processes were found to remove the discrepancy between the measured and predicted zero power gains. The rotational nonequilibrium theory was used to predict the power spectral distributions for HF and DF lasers and results were found to be consistent with experimental data.