Systems and methods for forming optimized transmit or receive beams using an array antenna. A parallelized beam forming algorithm is employed that allows the beam to be optimized to increase performance over typical time-delay beam steering. The parallelized beam forming optimization algorithm is based on a limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno algorithm with bound constraints. Using a matrix form of both the beam and beam gradient functions allows parallel optimization through beam matching against a designed target beam. Because the optimization is both efficient and parallelizable, beams may be optimized beams in real time. Hence the optimization technique may be implemented directly as part of a beam steering controller.