http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-41-vls.htm
See in particular the schematics at the bottom showing the various missle load options in the VLS. The rest of the FAS site has loads of info on various systems, including the various missles that can go in the VLS tubes.
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/missiles/wep-stnd.html
Likewise for the rest of that navy site, if you poke around a bit.
Here is a quote from the second, about the Standard missile -
"In more than a thousand firings over the past two decades, SM-2 consistently has demonstrated effective performance against targets from surface ships to helicopters, manned aircraft, and cruise missiles, from very low to very high altitudes and from stationary to supersonic speeds, under a variety of weather conditions, and across a spectrum of stressing electronic countermeasures environments."
The basic idea of Aegis is to couple advanced radar, target tracking computers, the VLS launch system, and large numbers of Standard missiles - or others that go in the VLS where more appropriate - on every major surface combatant. Then each of them can handle scores of threats from incoming missles to planes to surface ships, and collectively a group of them utterly dominate a whole "battle space" hundreds of miles across around every task force.
The Standard is continually being upgraded for new roles. These days the latest ones are high altitude theater ballistic missle defense (the IVA model), and GPS guided land attack out to about 200 miles range (LASM).