Amid the ever-evolving landscape of radar technology, the optimization and intelligent techniques capable of improving performance for the particular scenario and tasks, even in adverse electromagnetic environments, sprang up. This powerful feature is enabled by the new optimization algorithms, machine learning, neural networks, and reinforcement learning, etc., which provides unique capabilities for target detection, beamforming, waveform design, classification, identification, localization, interference/clutter suppression, and, just lost a few, tracking. The main goal of this special session is to highlight the advances in optimization and intelligent processing methodologies for radar systems. In this context, researchers are invited to introduce new techniques to deal with challenging radar applications.